


Sorry for the Repetition

by harcourt



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Grief, I wrote this for the kinkmeme, Injury, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time machine, Torture, longfic_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-08 06:45:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3199412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony fails to save Clint from a mission gone bad, there's only one thing to do. Reset the clock and try again. </p><p>
  <i>So he builds a machine that allows him to go back in time in an attempt to change fate...but he fails again and again and suddenly he's not confident anymore. He's terrified that he'll never be able to save his lover.</i>
</p><p>For <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19023.html?thread=43553359#t43553359">this prompt.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is fairly dark. There's no onscreen violence, but there is discussion and description of the trauma and injuries Clint suffers, and how he dies, as well as discussion of grief and survivor guilt/trauma.
> 
> Also for my [longfic bingo](http://harcourt.dreamwidth.org/6611.html#cutid1) square: Someone Died/Didn't Die.

Clint dies on a Thursday. Distantly, Tony thinks there's a _not my day_ joke in there he could make at Thor, but he can't get the words to come out in a sentence that isn't mostly garble and snot. 

"I thought I had him," he tells Steve, drinking another vodka-and-stuff-from-other-bottles cocktail. He's not sure what all is in it by now, but Steve is there to make sure he doesn't mix anything accidentally toxic, so it's not like he needs to be paying attention. 

Probably. It doesn't really matter.

"I was _sure_ I had him. It was--It looked like it was going to be a _cakewalk_." He'd underestimated. Had been joking on the line with Clint for the first couple hours of the flight, telling him _relax, I'll get there before you hit dirt. What are you at? Like the fifth floor?_

Clint wasn't falling and Tony hadn't gotten there. Someone _else_ had gotten there, and by the time Tony had set down in Europe, Clint was gone. 

That was Tuesday. 

They find Clint on Friday, dead a day. 

"That's three days," he slurs at Steve, for what's probably the two hundredth time. It sucks to be great at math. "They killed him for three days."

"I know, Tony."

"I said I'd get him." He tops his glass up with something blue, turning the cocktail muddy, but Steve doesn't react other than to take the bottle away and set it aside on the bar, out of reach.

"I know."

Tony takes a gulp, not tasting a thing, and grabs for a different bottle. This time Steve lets him fill his glass all the way to the top. "I told him I had him. And then I let them kill him for three _fucking_ days."

"You didn't _let_ anything," Steve says. "Tony--"

He snuffles. Like a kid on a crying jag, but his eyes are dry. Swollen and gritty, but dry. "I'd say he didn't go easy, but you'd probably consider that a good thing." 

"He knew you were coming."

Tony huffs. Slams back his drink. It burns. It tastes like shit. "Yeah," he snaps, "I'm so glad he waited for that." 

He reaches for the bottle again. This time, Steve catches his wrist, but doesn't say anything, and Tony doesn't pull away. They sit there like that for a while, in no shape to be awkward about it, while he snuffles some more and Steve swallows hard every fifteen or so seconds.

"Asshole," Tony rasps after the silence has gone on a while and the alcohol entering his bloodstream has made him progressively drunker, even while he's just sitting there. "That asshole. That's what he was doing, wasn't it? He was fucking _waiting_ for me."

Steve lets him go. Takes a breath. 

Tony swallows. Not crying. Not ripping apart at the guts anymore. "He was hanging on, waiting for me. Like a goddamn idiot," he says. 

"It's not your--" Steve starts, but Tony cuts him off with an impatient wave, scrubbing at his face with a rumpled shirtsleeve, wiping away tear tracks and god knew what. 

"If he's going to refuse to die, because I said I was coming," Tony says, determined and logical. All of it coming together into a _plan_. It feels coherent. "Then I'm damn well going to go get him."

"Tony," Steve says gently, face creasing in worry and sympathy, "It's late. You know he's at SHI--"

"No. I have--Selvig's tesseract super-duper wormhole maker thing."

"What are you--?"

"We don't have a tesseract, but we--I. _I_ \--Well. _It_. Has a charge. It has a--" he gestures. Steve gives him a crooked look. Tony huffs, exasperated.

"I can build a time machine, Steve," he says. "I'm _going to_ build a time machine."


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha tells him, "This is a bad idea," but she sounds more doubtful than like she's actually done the math, so Tony just grunts in response, up to his elbows in space-time continuum and Bruce's more informed cautionary tales. 

At least Natasha's not getting in his way, and not making any comments about the breaks he has to take to hyperventilate in the bathroom, or the dark purple hoodie he's been wearing for the last two days and steadily ruining with grease and burns. She's not giving him disapproving looks over his wrecking of Clint's things, so she gets to stay and sip the scotch he's poured but won't touch while attempting to play cat's cradle with the laws of the universe.

There's not a lot of juice to power his abomination of physics, and he doesn't have the time to sit around and contemplate the potential outcomes. The longer it takes to repurpose Loki's little intergalactic world domination toy, the longer a jump he's going to need it to make.

"Why do you even have that thing?" Natasha asks, spinning his desk chair one way about half a turn, then back the other way. She's pale and blotchy and her hair is a frizzed cloud around her face. It's nice that someone looks as fucked up as Tony feels. "I thought SHIELD took it."

"Took, requested and received previous test builds under false identities," Tony shrugs. "Removed key parts for study. Those things are all so similar. Who can pin one down?"

Natasha smiles. Half hearted and tired, and lets him work for a while, then asks, "Do you want to pick a day, Tony?"

"What are you talking about? We're not even dating."

It doesn't get a laugh. Not even a fake one. Instead, Natasha makes a suspicious sounding damp noise, that ends disguised as a cough. "To--for Clint," she says, avoiding the word _funeral_. Just the hint of it hiding under the implication makes his heart thump in what almost feels like panic and it's a good thing that he's working with bright blue glow, because otherwise he'd be seeing injury and Clint's pale, cracked lips behind his lids. Instead, his eyes just burn from the glare.

"I know you don't want to think about--" she starts, then stops, is silent for a minute, and ends with, "I don't like him being in a drawer in SHIELD for so long." Tony looks up in time to see her smile, and when she catches his gaze, she snorts. The sound hollow and self-mocking. "I don't want him to think we forgot he's there."

"I'm not forgetting," Tony snaps, and has to wipe his face on the sleeve of Clint's hoodie, because his vision suddenly blurs. One of them is making childish hiccuping noises, like trying to choke back more desperate sounds, and it's probably not Natasha. "I'm getting him. I promised I'd get him."

"Tony--"

"No. _No_. If you're worried, go talk to his drawer like Steve. You can tell him I'm gonna fucking fix this."

Natasha heaves a breath. Says, "We need to say goodbye, Tony."

"Not if I have any say about it, we don't."

\-----

He fires the machine up in the middle of the night, to get it going as soon as possible and take advantage of every second he can possibly rewind, and because the team might take failure as a good excuse to stage an intervention.

It hums softly, so low that it's only a vibration under his hand. Barely there, almost as quiet as the arc reactor, and then it shoots out a beam of light. Upwards and against the ceiling, because reorienting the machine hadn't occurred to him. Tipping it over seems like an option, but it's heavy, and he doesn't want it to accidentally fall and be damaged. He doesn't have the fucking time for that. 

Instead he gets one of the suit dressing arms to give him a boost, and climbs up through his ceiling and out of his floor, into what should be roughly two weeks ago. 

It only occurs to him after he's through and the bright doorway's collapsed behind him that he could have flown up in the suit.

\-----

There is no Tony in the past. Or rather, _he's_ the Tony in the past, so that's weird and nothing at all like Bruce's dire, probably sci-fi inspired warnings about meeting himself and possibly collapsing reality.

What _is_ in the past, is Clint, looking at him with a kind of lopsided, tilted head expression, chewing and carrying most of a sandwich in his hand. Taking another bite while Tony forgets how to breathe and swallows convulsively until his throat loosens enough to let him wheeze in a breath. Clint's head tilts a little more. Kind of suspiciously, or like a confused dog. "You okay?" he asks, trying to get a look at Tony's face. "What are you doing?" 

"Clint," Tony manages, then laughs. 

"Toxic fumes are not a go," Clint reminds, taking another bite of his sandwich. "Is your ventilation on? You look like shit." He stops, looks around. "Is it safe to be in here?"

Tony's mouth moves. He means to say _yeah_ , but it sticks in his throat and comes out as a croak. And then he's got his arms wrapped around Clint, and he probably smells like sweat and stale booze and is probably weirding Clint out on top of it all, but he can't let go. Clint is warm and making a sort of worried, awkward laughing sound, one hand reflexively coming up to pat Tony's back, while the other moves to protect his sandwich. Clint has no idea what's coming. Relaxed and easy and trying to tease answers out of him, and Tony sort of remembers this. Hanging out in the lab, Clint coming in eating crappy peanut butter and jelly on crappy made-from-sponges bread and getting in the way.

Cheerful, and a pain the ass, and without any idea that in about a week, someone would be taking him to literal pieces, and the idiot might still be mostly involved in his sandwich, but Tony can't help but clutch at him. Take his head between his hands, so he can look at Clint's face. At his unbruised eyes, his unsplit lips, and try to unsee the way he'd looked when Tony had found him and cleaned him up, too late to do any good.

"Hi there," Clint grins, misreading the whole thing, and why shouldn't he? Then his brow furrows. He says, "What the hell did you do to my sweater?"

\-----

Clint won't let the sweater thing go, which isn't weird, because Clint's always been a little over protective of his things. A little hoardy, maybe, sometimes, but it's surreal as hell to be getting into an argument over something so petty when the last time he'd seen Clint he'd been a lifeless wreck. It's bizarre that he's getting a little annoyed at Clint, even though he's also so happy to see Clint, and listen to Clint's bitching, that he could puke.

Possibly, it's annoying _because_ he's so happy to see Clint that he could puke. Mostly, he wants to tell Clint to shut the hell up about the fucking hoodie, and then grab onto him, and possibly, maybe, cry into his chest a little bit.

But he can't, or he'd have to explain what the hell was wrong with him, and then he'd have to tell Clint that he'd promised him a rescue and failed to make good on it. And then he'd maybe have to tell Clint exactly how he ends up, roughly a week from now.

He doesn't want to think about that. There's a bit of time before he has to say anything. For now, he slips the hoodie off and tosses it. It's strange how it's lost so much of its importance, with Clint standing right there in his bedroom, looking disgruntled and maybe a little offended. 

"Oh yeah. Throw my things," Clint grouches, but stops as Tony keeps stripping. Letting himself be distracted, even though Tony's purpose is mostly to get into the shower so he can stop smelling like slept-in clothes and grief, and like the version of himself whose Clint is in a morgue. 

But whose hair is at least not full of smoke and Clint's blood. He's sure he'd put his hands to his face. Torn at his own scalp. But he's also pretty sure that Steve or maybe Bruce had shoved him under a shower at some point during the last half week, and he's grateful, because not only would he stink worse than he does, but because it would be kind of creepy to be pulling Clint in with him to wash Clint _off_ him.

But that hasn't happened yet. 

He's wearing the same clothes he had been, and he smells like too long in the lab, but Clint's not looking at him like he's that concerned. Definitely not the way he'd be looking if Tony was wearing signs of drinking and barfing and not sleeping for the best part of five days. Instead, Clint just looks a little confused and irritated. The way he does when he can't follow exactly what Tony's up to, or if he gets talked at with too much rapid-fire jargon. Like he's figured out that something's a bit off, but not what it is. 

There's no real clues on Tony. Nothing but the way he keeps expecting Clint to be gone, then starts when he finds him _right there_ in sick reversal of the last few days of expecting Clint, and finding him gone.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Clint asks, forgetting about his mistreated property around the third time Tony jumps at his presence and has to touch his face and chest and mouth to make sure he's real. "You're acting kinda--Are you okay?"

Tony chucks his t-shirt. The lines he'd accidentally scratched into his arms, holding himself together, are gone and when he pulls Clint's shirt away, there's nothing but old, pale scars. No burns or cuts, and nothing has happened yet. Even his horror and grief hasn't happened yet, except in his head. 

In all other ways, his reset button's worked. He hasn't walked into the past. He _is_ the past. Or his past self. Or inserted himself into the timeline, somehow. 

He's getting the do over. 

It could really work.

"What's going on, Tony?" Clint asks, taking him by the wrists to tug his hands loose from Clint's shirt. Pushing him back by the shoulders to look him over from face to feet and back. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Tony says, sick with joy, and dread and Clint's voice. "Nothing yet."

Nothing he can't fix.

\-----

He watches Clint pack for about two and two-thirds minutes, and then he can't stand to see him digging through the fourth drawer down in Tony's dresser for the gray SHIELD t-shirt he'll leave in, and the pair of stolen-from-Tony dark briefs he'll be tortured to death in.

In a different, obsolete future. Tony has no intention of letting that happen again. Of letting that happen _at all_. 

For now, though, he pulls Clint's bag away and throws it, scattering clothing and gear across the floor, and, when Clint looks away from the mess to fix him with non-plussed  
irritation, Tony grabs him and pulls him into a kiss. 

Clint _mmph_ -s in protest, but his hands come up to settle on Tony's sides, light. Not pushing him away, but not holding on either. Clint--this handful-of-days-ago, unhurt, cheerful Clint--has no _reason_ to hold on. Not like Tony does.

Tony grabs and manhandles and kisses all over Clint's stupid face, pushing into his space until they both topple over onto the bed. Clint with a laugh, and him with a choking noise that might pass as a laugh, and he should probably be using the precious hours of his second chance on something more constructively useful than _warm breathing heart beating_ and _Clint Clint Clint_ , but he'd run too many _if I had one more day, hour, fifteen minutes_ scenarios in his head to not try for just one of them. 

For the best of them, which mostly involves looking down at Clint, touching and kissing and hearing him laugh again. Breathless and goofy, his own hands light enough on Tony's ribs to be ticklish, even though his hips buck up a little as he says, "Tony, Tony," in an un-Clint-like soothing way. "C'mon. You're freaking me out here."

"Sorry," Tony says back, in a similar tone. Just harsher and rougher and like all the drunken not-sobbing he'd done with Steve is caught in his throat. "It's okay. It's gonna be okay."

Clint rolls, tipping him off, and wriggling close to put them face-to-face. "What," he says, forming the words carefully, "is wrong with you?"

"Don't go on the mission," Tony blurts. "That's the best way. Just don't go."

Clint puffs, relaxing as his breath leaves him. "Oh. _That_." He starts to sit up. Tony pull him back down. They both ignore the way he's gripping hard enough that one of his nails scratches when his hand slips, leaving a score on Clint's arm. 

"If I don't go, someone else has to, Tony," he says, reasonable. He rolls onto his back, hands going into his own hair, so that Tony's view of his face is momentarily blocked, but then he drops his elbow and turns his head. Grins. "And I'm Hawkeye," he says, and adds, "The Amazing," as if he thinks Tony might have missed that or forgotten.

"Yeah, yeah." It's reflex. He's not really in any mood to play braggart one-upmanship games. It's taking his breath away to be falling back into familiar, worn banter. To be hearing and saying things he'd thought were gone. 

He swallows. Puts a hand on Clint's face, to keep him from breaking eye contact. "Clint," he says again, "Don't go."

"Geez," Clint laughs, "Miss me a bit, huh?"

"You have no idea."

"I'll make you a deal," he says. "Stop losing your mind, and I promise not to get blown up in a humvee or die in a cave, or whatever it is you're imagining."

"You have no idea what I'm imagining."

"Inter-dimensional portal?" Clint smiles, rolling back onto his side, pillowing his head on his still-folded arm. "I can pretty much promise--"

"Don't promise," Tony says, even though he knows space and rips in the sky won't be involved. 

"I _promise_ ," Clint says anyway, and with determination, and ducks in to kiss him. Gets up on an elbow to lean over him, and kiss him some more, and Tony wants to tell him to skip the fucking mission again, or maybe knock him out and lock him in the Hulk-out saferoom until the whole thing becomes a moot point. But Clint's not wearing anything aside from boxers and one of Tony's t-shirts, and _he's_ only going to be in his jeans for maybe another half minute, with the way Clint's jerking his fly open and tugging the denim down, fingers hooked in Tony's pockets for purchase.

"Ow," Tony complains, when Clint yanks, "Ow, ow."

"Baby." It's not an endearment, but Clint is laughing again. "Come on."

Tony lifts his hips, and there's a moment of tangled chaos as he tries to get Clint's shirt off and Clint tries to slide his jeans down his legs, followed by slightly more tactical maneuvering, as they try to sort themselves out, but mostly manage to get in each other's way.

"Okay," Clint says, breathing a little hard as he sits over Tony, face a little flushed, "Okay, regroup." But he stops his own efforts and ducks down so Tony can drag his shirt over his head and off, turning it inside-out as it slips free. 

Tony throws it into the mess of Clint's things he's already strewn across the floor and pulls Clint's hands back to his waistband. "Your turn, Barton."

"I don't know," Clint says, "You keep throwing my stuff. I'm not sure how much I like you right now," but he's pulling Tony's jeans down. More gently now that he's not competing with Tony. Tugging the fabric down until he can pull it off Tony's legs, and pointedly throw the balled up lump against a wall. 

"Eh," Tony shrugs. "It's just jeans."

Clint makes an exasperated noise, but the look on his face is fond. A silly half-grin that Tony hadn't thought he'd see again. It's making his chest hurt.

He covers by nodding at the boxers Clint's still got on. Looking away from Clint's face and settling his gaze a little lower, on the pool of shadow just under his sternum. It grows and shrinks with Clint's breath and Tony fixes on it. On that movement and sign of life, until Clint says, "Fine, if you aren't going to," and stupid-strip-teases his way out of his underwear. Extra awkward because he's on his knees at the end of the bed. Graceless and silly until he flops back down and kicks them away. "Ta dah."

"That ballet Nat's teaching you is really paying off," Tony says, grinning in spite of himself. 

Clint gives him a look, but it's only mock-censure. Then he snakes an arm out to drag Tony closer, pressing their bodies together, fingers tracing ribs and spine and then cupping his butt. Settling their hips together. Tony lets him, pulling at Clint's hair and probably snagging an ear as he presses their mouths together.

It could be sexier. Or messier. Or both. The whole thing is just odd angles and rough breathing. Dicks caught between them and pressed against each other. Clint hard against him and rocking slowly. Like he's trying to be gentle, or like he's concentrating on kissing back, and distracted.

"Shh, shh," Tony breathes, and pulls back a little. Just enough to take Clint's lower lip between his own. Kissing carefully, making light contact. Soothing himself more than Clint. Maybe soothing future, other Clint. Murmuring comfort to the version that could still hear it.

The one that--miraculously--doesn't grumble or tease about the shushing, but tugs Tony closer to grind against him. Hands still on his ass. Gripping in a way that's more purposeful than sexy, rocking a little more insistently. Breathing a little faster. 

Tony's more focused on that--on watching and listening to Clint and filing it all away-- than on the his own pleasure. Mostly, he's letting Clint set the pace and create the friction, stroking careful circles against Clint's temples with his thumbs and smoothing back bits of lightly sweated hair. 

Clint rocks against him hard, once, twice, then stops and slows down. Waiting for him to catch up, maybe, or making this last, which Tony would definitely be on board with. "I'm here," he tells Clint, "It's okay."

Clint probably interprets that as, "I'm close" and "Go on," because he groans and jerks and comes against Tony's belly. Groans against his shoulder, hands gripping and loosening in turns before he gathers himself up enough to snake a hand between them and take Tony's cock in his hand. Stroking him off.

It's not what Tony'd meant at all.

\-----

When he wakes up--when had he even fallen asleep?--Clint is gone. His clothing and gear and bag are gone from the floor, but it's only _maybe_ six in the morning, and the last time it was today, he hadn't left the tower until closer to noon.

"Oh fuck," Tony gasps, bolting upright. "Oh fuck. Oh fuck, no."

The last time it had been today, they'd had dinner with the others, and bickered with Nat afterwards about something Tony couldn't even remember anymore, then turned in a little bit too late for a pre-mission night. 

Because the mission was supposed to be easy and none of them had known Clint was going off to die, slowly and brutally and over the course of three days. Because Tony hadn't acted weird and tense and they hadn't fucked in the evening and fallen asleep curled up together, and probably Clint had wanted to leave on a good note. Didn't want to wake up to Tony still going on at him and risk getting into a fight, the last thing before heading out.

"No. Oh, god, Clint, no," Tony babbles, fumbling for and into some pants, and bolting out his door without shoes or shirt. Sprinting for the elevators. "JARVIS. JARVIS, is Agent Barton in the building?"

"No, sir."

"Okay. Okay. When did he go? He can't be catching his flight until later, so he's probably still at SHIELD. He--I need Natasha."

\-----

Natasha isn't in on Clint's mission plans. Or on the reasons for Tony's panic. She just gives him a bemused smile as he paces up and down the hall, yelling and pulling at his hair until Steve arrives on the scene and joins her.

"He'll call in," Natasha says, once he's calmed down a little and is mostly panting and glaring. 

"I _know_ he'll call in," Tony shouts.

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem is _I had everything planned around him leaving at noon_." He's probably screaming. He's not sure. It feels like his throat's been raw and everything too loud for a while now. There's a background buzz that is probably his blood pressure shooting through the roof, and rushing in his ears.

"Are you alright?" Steve. Sounding muted and distant, but looking too-sharp around the edges. Adrenaline, Tony thinks. His post-New York propensity to freak the fuck out is doing no one any favors right now.

"Clint left early," Natasha says. Natasha thinks this is a boyfriends issue. That would explain the way she's kind of smiling. The spark in her eye. In about a week she's going to think this is a lot less funny. Maybe come and not-cry in his lab again and tell him that she needs to say a proper goodbye to Clint.

Tony drags in a breath. He has--a few hours. He should have a few hours. He'd been able to calculate with disturbing exactitude how long it had likely taken Clint to die--how long it was _going to_ take Clint to die--but he can't seem to manage to figure out the difference between _last time's_ time and today's.

"Last time he left at noon," Tony says, using his fingers to illustrate what should be simple math, "so how long until one could reasonably expect a SHIELD transport to leave after he reports in?"

Natasha and Steve exchange looks. "Are you going to storm SHIELD so you can ask to make-up for whatever it is you did?" she asks. "Do you even know where he's leaving from?"

Tony freezes. He'd assumed--

"Same place you usually leave from?" he tries. "No? JFK? Washington? Greyhound to the West Coast, then a secret air strip in wine country?"

"It's always classified," Natasha shrugs. "I don't know, Tony. He didn't tell me." 

"Oh god. Oh my god. I should have--" done research. He'd been too deep into desperation and his brilliant idea of playing with magic and he should have listened to Bruce's theories about time lines and butterfly effects and sleeping enough to be clear headed. "I thought--I just--I had a half-assed plan."

"So the usual Thursday, then?" Steve jokes, dry. 

Thursday. 

They have a week.

"This is _really_ not my day," Tony mumbles, mostly to himself, and swallows. Sets his jaw. He might not know where Clint is, or what SHIELD secret jet-launching hole he might be zooming to his death from, but he _does_ know where Clint is going. 

Where Clint will try to lie low to call for back-up.

Where he'll disappear from.

Where he'll die for three days, and where Tony will find him, a good day too late.

Those are all solid destinations. He knows them by heart, down to their GPS coordinates.

"JARVIS," he yells, already running back the way he'd come, down the hall and towards the elevators, "Get the suit ready."

\-----

Steve follows him to the upper level, positioning himself between Tony and his access to the exits, eyeing him warily as he bolts food--it doesn't matter what, he needs the fuel. It's hours to Europe, and even with a head-start, he might need to move the second he hits the ground. Or, at any rate, he'll need to be ready to stake-out Clint's past-future known locations. There won't be time for a snack break. He's not running that risk.

"Tony," Steve says, "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing. I have stuff to do. Important, busy stuff. I'd ask you to back me up, but you might decide to have me put away instead, so I'm just gonna ask you to trust me, okay?"

"I--"

"Can't do that?" Tony gives him a crooked smirk. It would be easier to hold that against Steve, if he wasn't so aware of acting like a nutjob.

"Promised Clint I'd keep an eye on you," Steve finishes, sounding somewhere between worried and affronted. 

"Oh? He thinks I'm the one who needs the eye keeping on, does he?" That's almost funny, that Clint thinks he's the one in danger here, but in a way that makes Tony's throat tight and the back of his mouth sour. He can hear his heart thumping. Imagines it's making the arc reactor feel too big for his sternum. There's a solid ache all the way around the casing.

"He said you were acting weird, and you're not exactly doing much to--"

"Clint's going to die."

"What?"

Tony rips open a protein bar. Shoves half into his mouth and chews just enough that he can swallow before shoving the rest in after. "Clint's gonna die," he repeats, around his full mouth, "if we don't do something."

Steve takes a breath. Lets it out. His face scrunches. He's thinking of something supportive to say that won't also be hypocritical or an empty platitude. Probably, he'll settle on something like, _Clint knows the risks of his job, Tony_ , or _He's one of the best, he can look after himself_.

Except Clint doesn't know the risks of _this particular_ job, and he _can't_ look after himself. Not this time. This time, he'll end up in a damp concrete room, and then a cold drawer in SHIELD's morgue.

"Get out of my way, Steve. I have a plane to beat."

"You don't even know--"

"That's what you think." He knows way, _way_ too much.

And even that might not be enough. He has no idea what Clint's doing, why he's doing it, who he's doing it to, or what for. Just locations and an idea of when certain things will happen that isn't even that exact. His excess of information is more along the lines of the sound Natasha will make when she's informed of Clint's death, and how many times Steve will ask if he's _sure_ there's no pulse before his voice breaks on the question, and dissolves into static and comm feedback, and how Clint will look. Pale like he's been bled dry, except for the livid, surreal color of contusions and burns, standing out against--

"Get out of my way."

Steve doesn't. He holds his hands up placatingly, but instead of calming Tony down, it makes him want to break every one of Steve's fingers. "Just take it easy. Tell me what's going on. Are you having some kind of--"

"Mental break? Panic attack? Psychotic episode? What will make you feel better?" He's losing time, but he probably won't make it at all if he tries to dodge around Steve. 

"None of those make me feel better," Steve says.

He's not budging. Tony makes the best of the delay, unwrapping another protein bar to put the time to use, considering and dismissing the option of fire extinguishing Steve out of way. 

"Clint's in trouble. Going to be in trouble. I gotta--" He stumbles on _find him_ , throat closing up, forcing the alternative, "get him back," to come out in a croak.

"He just _left_ ," Steve points out, and that's pretty much Tony's entire plan. To beat Clint there. To get there early instead of too late, and maybe even save Clint most of the beatings instead of just the miserable, brutal death.

"Try to stop me, Steve," Tony says, low. A threat. If Clint dies because of this, he won't forgive Steve. Won't be able to get past it. Will look at Steve and see Clint half-curled up on cold concrete, see the last glimpse of his hair disappearing into a dark SHIELD body bag. And unlike week-from-now Steve, _this one_ will know he could, maybe, have stopped it from happening by just standing the hell down.

He's made a mess. Set up a potential greater disaster. _This_ Clint could take the Avengers with him, when he goes. If he goes. If Steve _lets_ him go.

"Just tell me what's going on," Steve says, "We can bring the team in on it, if it's--"

"If I play this right," Tony says, "There won't be anything to bring the team in _on_."

Steve doesn't step aside, but when Tony walks past him towards the sliding doors and the launch pad, he doesn't make a move to stop him either.

\-----

He's not right. 

He's not sure if Clint's making different calls this time around, or if the mission's whole timeline's shifted based only on Clint's earlier start, but his mayday doesn't come from where Tony expects, and there's no sign that he ever comes near his expected hidey hole. Tony's in Europe instead of _en route_ this time, when Clint just falls off the map, with no comm chatter, and no check-ins after the initial call for help. 

Even staking out the abandoned building where Clint's going to die comes to nothing, because he doesn't die there. No one ever shows up and the corner he'd found Clint thrown into stays empty. 

This time, Clint dies on Friday.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony wakes up the next morning, on Thursday. 

The next week's Thursday. _His_ Thursday, where-- _when_ \--Clint's been dead a week, and he's been alternating drinking with staring at his walls with not listening to his phonecalls until they turn to static buzzing in his ear, and then hanging up mid-conversation so he can repeat the process. 

_This_ Thursday he's still engaged in all that, but also in a bitter fight with Steve, which he discovers when he drags himself out from the lab and up to the penthouse and finds Steve hunched at his bar, glaring at a drink and wearing rumpled clothes.

"It was a dump site," Tony tells him, not sure yet how much Steve remembers of which circumstance. His throat feels raw again, and he's still wearing Clint's stupid sweatshirt. He probably needs a wash as badly Steve does.

"Don't start." Steve sounds about as rough. Not the grieving but solid pillar he'd been before Tony decided to play do-over. Tony smiles a little, wry and humorless. He'd predicted this. "I _said_ , call in the team. I _said_ to fill me in. I don't--"

"You're blaming _me_?" This part--this part he hadn't foreseen.

Steve knocks back his ineffectual drink, and slams the glass down--not hard enough to break glass or bar--and looks up to glare. His eyes aren't red rimmed, but they are shadowed in a way Tony hasn't been familiar with, even from the aftermath of Clint's previous death.

"You _knew_ something was wrong. You knew before it happened. Before _Clint_ knew."

"What are you getting at?"

This fight is a week old and a week in. Tony doesn't remember any of it. It's a fucking awful trade-off for getting a complete second version of finding Clint and calling SHIELD and telling Natasha _I'm so sorry_ to go with the original go-round.

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it. Narrows his eyes. Tony's probably asked him that before. It's probably a question better suited to earlier in the week. It seems like they've moved on from the questions part of the argument into the sullen anger part, but whatever Steve and the alternate him Steve remembers had been throwing back and forth up until this point means close to nothing to now-Tony. 

"Whatever it is you think I'm up to, Steve," he says, smirking more out of habit and muscle memory than any kind of amusement, "Trust me. You don't have a clue." Because if he and Steve had been busy pointing angry fingers, then Steve probably hadn't played babysitter while Tony drank himself numb, and they hadn't sat at the bar in miserable shared grief, and Tony had probably not announced his intentions to put his last bit of tesseract charge to use, and Steve had probably not come to check up on him in the lab while he was busy putting his plan into action.

Steve looks away instead of answering, and the evasion is unlike him and awful. Tony can only just see the corner of his mouth twitch as he ducks his head and his face turns into shadows. His breathing is audible, just a little too loud, and then he brings a hand up to press it to his face and stays like that.

"I should have gone with you," he says, eventually, voice rougher all of a sudden than it had been. "You said he was in trouble, why didn't you--"

"Coulda, shouda," Tony says, too fast. Too flippant. Off enough that it makes Steve jerk, maybe interpreting it as an attack. Whatever fighting they'd been doing this last week, it must have been vicious. 

"What happened to--" he has to stop, and in spite of his panic and the rush he's in, has to drop his voice to a whisper to manage, "Clint?"

_That_ makes Steve look back up. Raising his head like it weighs a ton, and turning to look at Tony. "What's wrong with you?" he asks, half offense and half like he thinks Tony might actually be going off the deep end. "What the hell is--?"

"Steve. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for not--for _everything_ , but I need to know--"

"You were there." It's not loud, or snapped, but it is angry. In a low, tired, slow burn way that Tony doesn't associate with Steve at all.

"I don't remember," he says, still standing more or less in the middle of his own penthouse. Run out of steam, and not sure where he'd been heading anyway. "It--A lot of it's a blur."

Steve doesn't say anything and it's not clear what he's thinking, or how he's taking that, so Tony says, "I want to see him."

\-----

It's not that he's ghoulish, or perverse, or trying to torture himself, although Natasha probably thinks he might be one or all of those things, escorting him with more than a little hesitation to one of the hospitals SHIELD uses and then down empty, horribly lit hallways, ugly linoleum squeaking under their feet.

He wishes Bruce were there. Bruce would be more useful than Natasha, who looks frayed herself, and worried, watching him out of the corner of her eye like she thinks he's going to crack. He isn't. He's still got juice in his tesseract machine. He can try again to save Clint, if he can just gather enough information. Retrace Hawkeye's steps and work out his mission, and figure something out beyond the main landmarks of Clint's death.

The now defunct landmarks of Clint's death, if the do-over of his do-over starts with the changes already in place. 

There's no way to tell if that will be the case, but he has to be ready. Can't be distracted this time by relief and terror and _Clint_ , or Clint might die. Again. And even if Clint won't remember any of it later, Tony might not be able to handle finding his body too many more times.

Natasha follows him into the cold, sterile room, but stays by the door, leaning against the tiled wall while Tony makes his way past stainless steel tables and glass-doored cabinets. Past gurneys. In some ways the aesthetics aren't too different from some of his own workshops. He tries not to look at the ways that they differ. Thinks _R &D lab_ and imagines his grungy armchair, with the stuffing poking out and doesn't turn to look at any of the visible equipment, but mentally substituting DUM-E only goes so far. There's nothing the wall of stainless steel drawers at the back of the room can be, other than cold storage. 

He finds the door marked _Barton, C_ without much trouble, and his hand closes around the handle, and stays there. He probably loses minutes, because he doesn't notice Natasha moving until her arm brushes his and she asks, "Why are we here?"

"I need to--" His throat closes. Natasha gives him a look. She doesn't want to be here or see any more than he does. "Process the body," Tony finishes.

"Jesus, Tony." 

Tony looks at her, then back at his hand. 

"We're leaving," Natasha says.

"It was a dump site. I thought I knew where it happened, but it was a dump site. Something--He changed the timeframe. He took an extra day to die." 

"Tony,--"

"Maybe they didn't have time. Or they had to move. Or they _were_ moving, and were just coincidentally in a different location when Clint--"

"We're going, Tony."

"When they killed him." 

He doesn't mean to torture Natasha. It's just sort of happening automatically. The same way his arm jerks, then pulls, and the drawer slides out. Heavy, then smooth, with only the faintest hiss of rollers. 

And then Natasha pushes it shut again and shoves him. Not hard, but enough that he has to take a stumbling step back to keep his balance.

"I have to know where he died."

"No, you don't."

"You don't--"

"SHIELD has a file. They've done the work. You can read that."

He has. Earlier, in a different version of this week. "He's just KIA. They don't care about the _specifics_."

"You don't need the damn specifics. It's over. He's gone, Tony. It's _over_."

They're shouting. Or at least, Natasha is. Tony wonders if his voice had sounded that thick, in the reality where Steve didn't think he'd withheld information that had caused Clint's death. If there'd been that same desperate, angry edge in his voice when he'd yelled at Steve over absently mixed cocktails.

"It's not over," he says, promising it the same way he'd promised a same-but-different Natasha, "I can fix this."

Her face softens. She looks the way she had when she'd come to check on him in the lab and humor him about the time machine. Probably the worse state she's in here is his and Steve's fault. Instead of rallying around Clint's loss, _this_ team is fracturing along the faultlines of the secrets Tony had known and kept.

"I need to know where he died," Tony says, solemn, knowing Nat, if not Steve could understand being kept in the dark. Being given tasks and no explanation. "I need to know how he died."

Natasha keeps her hand on the drawer, moving her body between him and it, and he's not sure if she's still protecting Clint, even now, or protecting Tony from himself. 

"I'll get someone on it," she says.

"What? I can't wait on--"

"I'll get someone _on it_."

It's clearly the end of the discussion. He's done nothing here but waste time. He glances back at the drawer. Natasha sets herself more firmly in front of it, and just like that, he's done. Wants nothing _less_ than to see Clint, damaged and reduced to a shell. Not when he can still hear Clint griping about his sweater and feel him, warm and lazy, half asleep against him.

"Fast," he hears himself telling Nat. "Get them on it _fast_."

\-----

When they get back to the tower, Tony throws Clint's sweater in the wash, showers, changes, eats--all mechanically and without thought--then turns his music up to repel Steve. If everything goes right, they won't need to talk. Everything will just be fixed. He just has to climb back up through his personal rift in time, find Clint, and prevent him from leaving.

Just focus and act. No room for distraction or to think about Clint, laughing and joking and grumbling, warm under his hands. He can't let himself get pulled into it, or let go, even for a second, of the Clint that's rightfully his, in a drawer at SHIELD, or he'll get derailed, and it will all be this, again. 

Might be this, but worse.

"Get a grip, Stark," he tells his ceiling, clambering up, still not resorting to the practicality of his repulsor boots. Something about the precarious scramble from robot claw to the lip of the hole, to the awkwardly kicking himself up and through feels right. Makes everything a little less surreal, if he can turn the jump into something physical.

He wriggles out onto the floor of two weeks ago, and bounces up--just in case anyone's there to see--and brushes himself off. He's wearing a dark t-shirt and jeans. The same clothes he'd been wearing, while, half a month and one death into the future, Clint's sweater finishes tumbling through a wash-and-dry cycle.

He just needs to find Clint, and in two minutes this could be done, and he won't even need the research he's set Natasha on, if she's even still working on it--if he'll still have asked her the favor, by the time he gets back. 

It's convoluted. And hopefully beside the point. He's willing to lock Clint up in the Hulk-out room or a closet or even an Iron Man suit until the whole thing is irrelevant, and then weather the consequences. 

He bolts for the elevators, putting on the brakes just enough to not smack into the lab doors before they can slide open, and skidding through, sneakers squealing. The elevator takes a bit longer, even with a lot of button punching and swearing at JARVIS, and then is followed by an interminable ride up to the communal levels that Tony spends bouncing one leg and tapping his fingers against his thighs. 

Steve looks up from something he's studying on a tablet and smiles. Suddenly open-faced and friendly again. Or still open-faced and friendly, because Tony hasn't gone and played solo act and gotten Clint killed yet. 

He's about to re-screw that right back up.

"Steve."

He must sound weird, because Steve straightens up a little and looks like he's considering getting up. 

"Where's Clint?"

"What?" Steve asks, and frowns. He gets a confused little furrow in his brow. Tony's chest hurts. He rubs at it with the heel of one hand, scrubbing the ribs to one side of the arc reactor, like that might make the casing sit better.

"Are you okay?" Steve asks, tracking the movement. Tony drops his hand.

"Clint," he repeats, tilting his head to prompt Steve. Trying to not vibrate with impatience. "Where is he?"

Steve's eyes narrow. For a second Tony thinks his portal’s failed and he's still with the angry, betrayed Cap of the alternate future, but then Steve's face shifts into a perplexed, puzzled look. Mouth pulling up at one side, one eye squinching just a bit. It could almost be funny, if Tony wasn't already putting together the pieces and realizing what's happened.

"I though he left," Steve says slowly, sounding confused but cautious, "already."

"Oh, fuck."

"Tony?"

"Oh god, no."

"What's going on, Tony?"

Tony blinks. That's getting to be the soundbyte of his life, _what's going on_. "I have a set amount of power," he says, feeling tired, and resigned, and sick, "It's a day later." He swallows, and clarifies, uselessly, "Than last time. I spend too much time doing _things_."

Steve's on his feet now, peering at him and looking worried. Closing the space between them by careful inches. Tony snorts. 

"Don't worry, Cap. I'm not going to blow."

"You sure about that?" 

There's the hint of gentle teasing in it, under the worry. It's too bad Tony's about to set back in motion all the bits that will add up to them being--apparently--on barely speaking terms. He tries to smile the apology that won't make sense to say, and asks, "When did he leave?"

"This morning?" The rising inflection is more doubt than actual question. "Before five? I was heading out running." He still looks worried. Outside, it's getting dark. Maybe, Tony had already run around demanding where Clint had gone. Maybe he's supposed to be on his way to Europe. If this is, in fact, the last time it was today, he _should be_ on his way to Europe by now. 

He can't work out the physics _or_ the logic. He needs Bruce. Or maybe Thor. Considering he's using tesseract power, it's probably not physics he needs to be figuring out. Maybe not logic, either.

At least he can piece together that he's working with the new, expedited time frame that somehow ends up with Clint dying on Friday, buying him another day. Maybe. There's no telling if any of the pieces of this jigsaw are static or even stable. If he can rely on what information he has and use it to manipulate outcomes, or if every go-round is going to be a fresh, random toss-up. All the events scrambled and hopelessly left to chance.

That's the first answer he needs. To figure out what he's dealing with here, and how, exactly, he can deal with it, and if the hole in his lab ceiling is taking him back exactly the same amount of time, then he doesn't have an unlimited number of tries. Eventually, real-time will move forward enough that do-over-time won't start far enough back. Eventually, his portal will lead back to a time _after_ Clint's death, or to a time so close to it, that he'll be helpless to make any difference. 

He has to consider this round a control test, then hit his reset button as soon as he's figured out how much of the events shift is his doing and how much of it just _happens_ , all on its own, tied up somehow in the mechanism of whatever the fuck he's done to time and space and reality. 

"JARVIS," he says, staying as close to script as he can, knowing what it will mean, at least for Clint. For this go-round of Clint. "Get the suit ready."

Steve follows him to the roof.

\-----

Not saving Clint is immeasurably harder than even frantically rushing around and falling behind the clock. Tony sticks to his script--receives the mayday, notes how long it takes Clint to fall off grid, then dutifully makes his rounds of Clint previous-but-now-obsolete known locations, the same as he had before, just in case _not_ doing that somehow changes something, and decidedly doesn't think about where Clint is and what's happening to him right now. _Definitely_ doesn't think about the fact that not only is he going to fail at finding him, he isn't even looking.

He's almost glad that Clint also seems to be following the new timeline, and falls into off-the-grid silence after the initial mayday, because it keeps him from promising _I'm coming_ when he isn't.

Clint probably believes he is, though. Clint's going to hold out until Friday on the strength of it.

Like before, no one shows up at the original dump site. It just gets dark and quiet and cold, and somewhere, Clint's down to maybe a few hours.

Tony takes a breath. Checks the time, then checks it again. It would be sensible to get some sleep, so he can hit the future running, and go again without losing a minute that he doesn't have to, but it's impossible.

Clint dies and Tony finds him right on schedule, which means that the changes are his doing. That he's the reason Clint's not _here_ , and if he'd had more foresight, he'd have had this whole thing wrapped up that first time instead of wasting his chance having freaked out, mediocre sex.

Right on schedule, he tells Natasha, "I'm sorry," and tunes out Steve's questions, and lets SHIELD come and pack Clint away.


	4. Chapter 4

When he gets back to the future--or present. It's all getting a bit garbled--Steve is still angry, which should be upsetting, but just means his experiment is a success. If he can keep his changes controlled, he can stop Clint from getting bounced onto a whole new series of actions, unfolding along an again changed timeframe. He has to be careful. Keep a cool head. 

Draw a map, maybe, even if it might get _un_ drawn again, the way Natasha might have unpromised to get Clint more carefully examined, depending on how the last day had gone. Depending on what he might have accidentally done slightly differently and how the effects of it might have rippled outward.

This is the mindset he needs to stay in. Both to keep his brain on track, sorting timelines and actions, and to maintain his sanity. If he thinks about letting Clint die, horribly and alone, with anything but clinical distance, he's going to lose it. If he lets himself consider what's going on with _Steve_ as anything but a temporary result, on the same level as a suit that won't quite fly straight. And like a suit that won't fly straight, he has to focus on the problem solving process and the proverbial Mark Two. Or Three. Or maybe it's Four, by now. It depends where he starts counting, really.

First, he has to figure out _when_ he is, and if past experience is anything to go by, it's late on Friday, picking up at the same point where he'd left for the second time, a week and a death ago. After trying to see Clint and being stopped by Natasha. 

If he gives himself a day to gather information and rest, Clint will already be in Europe by the time he gets back. If he goes back and _doesn't_ go after Clint, abandoning him again, he'll have more time to work, but changing his actions could change the outcome and set him back to square one or on an even more impossible track, bouncing Clint completely out of reach if he isn't already.

Tony takes a breath. Lets it out slowly, and tries to organize his facts. Going back right away would give him another week of time, but it also won't move anything forward _here_ and he needs Natasha's report.

Needs to make sure Natasha's still working on getting that report and that he doesn't need to set her back on it. The time between his falling asleep roughly a week in the past and waking up _now_ seems gone for good. Traded off, maybe, in exchange for the time he's getting back. Like his fight with Steve, he has no idea what's happened or hasn't and what might or might not have changed. A very time frame specific amnesia.

\-----

It takes precious hours for the forensic report to come back, and Tony spends it lying on top of his covers staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, trying to be ready to go the minute he's read the file. He's slept, here and there, and with determination, after recovering Clint's body, but the exhaustion feels settled in his bones, tucked alongside and wrapped around the ache of Clint's three deaths.

He hasn't felt this way in a long time, trapped and lonely and fucking terrified, and even if the team is close by, they're inaccessible. Living a reality that intersects with Tony's but is effectively separate.

He drifts a little, eventually, and wakes to the sound of his door buzzer and a rush of panic. Fumbles for his phone before managing to croak, "JARVIS, what's the time?" then changes that to, "How long was I out for?" 

It's longer than he'd meant, but not as long as he'd feared. He feels grimy and rumpled and his clothing probably smells like stale sweat. He hopes it's not Steve at the door, coming to pick a fight or ask questions he doesn't have the energy or answers for.

When it turns out to be Natasha, he's not sure he has the energy for her, either. Or for the folder she presses to his chest in one abrupt, almost aggressive move. Like she wants it out of her hands as soon as possible. She looks rough. Sharp edges looking even sharper than he remembers, the shadows on her face harsh.

"Hey," he says. His voice is a thick croak and he has to cough to clear the sticky feeling from his throat. 

"You look like shit," Natasha tells him.

"You too."

Her smile flickers and is gone again. She nods at the folder he's holding awkwardly against his chest with one hand. "I hope that helps you. Just never ask me to do something like that again."

Tony looks down at the folder. Tries not to think about what's in it, and what he's about to look at and read, and what he might have made _Natasha_ look at and read. Probably, he should apologize, and ask if she's okay, but before he can get enough synapses online to do it, Natasha lets her breath out and gives him a look that's almost painfully sympathetic. It would be nice if was just Black Widow manipulation, but Tony's pretty sure that it's genuine. "It might just make things worse, Tony," she says.

He could make a comment about that being a tall order, but instead he says, "Yeah."

"It's not going to bring him back."

He's not sure if she remembers what he'd told her about tesseract charge and what kind of machine he was building. If any of that had even happened, though, obviously, the machine is sitting in his lab, still pointed impractically at his ceiling. 

Wonders if he'd talked with Steve over drinks, even though it seems unlikely, considering the aftermath of losing Clint. 

"You--" Tony starts, and puts his other hand on the file, holding it to his chest to avoid losing pages, or photos, or whatever might be tucked into it, but maybe coming off like he's clutching at it for security. "Thanks."

Natasha's head tilts. Just slightly, but she's on to him. On to something. The questioning look on her face is two thirds suspicion, and only one third concern. It's nice to see. Kind of steadying. 

"What's going on?"

Soundtrack of his life.

"I just--" Tony doesn't lie, "I need to know what happened. Exactly."

"Steve thinks you already know."

"Steve can go jump in a lake," Tony says, mostly because it's expected. Because it's what he might say if he were _actually_ fighting with and offended by Steve. It doesn't suit the situation, though, because Natasha gives him another look. Longer and more unreadable, and then she steps back and nods at the folder again.

Repeats her warning, "That's not going to be anything you want to see."

He'd return her look, but the folder against his chest feels heavy and fragile and dangerous. The only way he can think of to get a lead on Clint, and unravel his death enough to beat it to the punch. 

"I bet." He's already seen the damage and he'd point that out, except that he's sure this clinical detail will be worse.

"You can't fix this, Tony,"

She won't remember if he does, Tony thinks, but doesn't say.

\-----

Bruce would appreciate jokes about time math. Or might just appreciate the concept of it and the calculation that leads Tony to boosting himself back up into the past, file in hand, to hole up in his lab and play loud music, keeping the others away so he can study the contents of the file and take deep slow breaths, focusing on the text and not the photos. 

He needs time to concentrate. To study the file without a clock ticking away, eating up precious minutes he can't recover. This time, he arrives in the early morning, and Clint might _already_ be in Europe, or about to touch down on some SHIELD runway.

If the last round was his control test, this time is just time-buying. He can't think about Clint. _This_ Clint. Just because Tony's replaying the tape, it doesn't mean Clint _is_ suffering multiple deaths, and what's done is done. He has to consider Clint gone until he figures out how to fix it. Play the long game, and--as much as possible--stick to working his way through the previously established script, to prevent anything changing. Keep his eyes on the prize.

So to speak.

Be patient. Keep his cool. Read the file.

He lays it on his table, half bugged and half grateful that Natasha's given him a physical copy and not a dinky little thumb drive or data chip. That he can hold the grim information in his hands, and solemnly flip it open instead of having to click a file icon and have the whole thing open up around him in holographic display, awful and insubstantial at the same time. On paper, at least, it seems contained.

Controllable.

Which is a weird feeling for him to have, considering. He's turning into Steve, a little bit.

The first page is admin. Describing the file, and listing authorization. Tony flicks his eyes away from _post mortem_ and _Barton, Clinton F_. Flips quickly past to the next page, and then the next. He'll get back to the photos if he needs them. For now, he wants what evidence might have been collected off Clint's body and clothing. 

Or what there'd been of it, his gear and Hawkeye vest gone by the time Tony had found him, still and stripped down to underwear and ripped shirt. The black contrasting harshly with his pale, bled out skin. 

It's a fucking disgrace that Tony hadn't noticed he'd just been _dumped_. That there wasn't nearly enough gore for Clint to have been tortured and killed right there, in the basement they'd first found him in. That the place was too empty and sparse to have been used for much, even interrogation and systematic murder.

There's earth, bits of gravel. Blood on everything, but not all of it Clint's. Skin under his nails, and Tony can't quite imagine Clint resorting to tactics as graceless as scratching and clawing, but good for him. Hopefully, he's gouged that off someone's face.

Checking it for DNA is most likely going to go nowhere, but there's also machine grease picked up from Clint's skin, and Tony Stark _knows_ machine grease. Flecks of oxidized steel and wood splinters picked from abrasions on Clint's hands and elbows and one knee. 

From his fucking _face_. 

Tony's putting some things together, but they're not useful. Somewhere out there, Clint's heading right into this mess, and there's nothing he can do to keep it from happening yet. Maybe next time. Or the time after, but he's going to get there, definitely, and undo all of it, even Steve's foul mood. 

The next page is graphs. A more detailed run-down of the soil samples and general crud. Man-made fibers stuck in Clint's hair--stuck _to_ Clint's hair, clotted with blood and dirt--in blue and gray and yellow. Wildly different from the natural strands collected from abrasions at his wrists--regular brown rope. It's almost shocking that anyone had managed to hold Clint with that. He must have already been injured on capture, or drugged with something that metabolized quickly enough to be gone from his system.

So in a bit over three days, things are going to start going drastically downhill for Clint. In two, he's going to notice his mission's not going too well. 

Tony takes a breath. Flips back to the page describing _Clint_ , and glances over the injury list. Looks for gunshot, or head trauma, and tries to think if anything had stood out to him, beyond how ghostly white _Steve_ had looked, but that's the image that keeps coming back. That and the whole-body numbness that had washed over him, blocking detail and critical thought and making him lose all the important pieces in favor of recording the exact tone of Bruce in the back of the transport, saying, "We're taking you home now," as if reassuring Clint, thinking no one was listening.

\-----

By the time the script kicks in, Tony's narrowed down his main points of contact with the timeline--where he might possibly effect it--to sniping at Steve on the roof, being gone before Clint's mayday even gets in, and to his failed stake-out and finding Clint too late. Dumped, this time, like the two before, in an underpass, the brick arches of its weathered support structure sheltered by embankments of earth. Like the time in the cellar, Clint's lying half-curled in on himself, one arm flung outwards and his shirt rucked up. 

This time, unlike the other times, Tony doesn't go to him, but just keys his comm and says, "I found him, Nat," and "I'm sorry," and then stands and waits for the others to get there.

\-----

He feels numb and distant all the way up to the point where he falls asleep and wakes up with a week missing and Clint still gone. He's not sure how much time has passed in total, or if SHIELD's done with their post mission implosion red-tape. At some point, Natasha's going to run out of patience and her ability to put off laying Clint to rest. 

If she's not planning that yet, quietly and on her own. Maybe with help from Bruce. All Tony's sure of is that he can't say an official goodbye to Clint and then keep on temporarily killing him. All he needs is four days breathing space. Maybe five. After that, he'll have moved too far into the future anyway, and Clint will just be dead.

He's slept, at least, this time. So there's a point for time management.

He's getting better at letting Clint die on schedule.

The thought doesn't hit him in the gut the way it had the first time. The first forty, fifty times he'd thought it. Everything still feels like a dream. Fuzzy, and unreal. It's kind of nice. But it only lasts until he runs into Steve.

"Hey." It's the only safe bet. He's pretty sure he hasn't undone their argument, but he's also not sure what the exact situation is, now. It looks like it might have gotten worse. Steve's giving him a flat, empty look. Not shocked grief, like before, but emotionless and cold, like Natasha on the job.

Tony tries to think. Wonders if he'd said anything different or incautious while they were gathering up, again. If Steve's reading something into his lack of engagement, since _been there done that_ is pretty much guaranteed to be off his radar.

"What's up?" Tony ventures. It shouldn't be too risky. Should fit right in to the _why didn't you talk to me_ blame and censure from the last time around. 

Somehow, Steve still looks startled by the question. Shocked in a way that's a large part offense.

"Unless you're here to explain," he says, and leaves it hanging. 

It's not really a prompt. Tony can tell that he doesn't expect a response. He sounds flat and angry and not like himself. 

He looks like he's just barely holding it together. Maybe like he'd enjoy socking Tony a good one in the face.

"Explain what?" Tony asks, "You'll have to catch me up, Cap. I'm a bit lost here." 

Steve's angry look twists into something wry and bitter. If they've been fighting, Tony's probably said more than his fair share of snippy, smart aleck things. Had probably said a bunch of snippy, disingenuous things too, that this latest comment fits right in with.

Things might be going a bit easier right now, if he had ever been in the general habit of watching his mouth.

"Well how about a clue, then? Even just a little bitty one?"

It doesn't come out right, sounding flip and snide instead of friendly and like he's trying to extend an olive branch, the way he means. It makes Steve flinch, and that's worse than pissing him back off. 

"Steve--"

"The only," Steve starts, cutting him off, then swallows and says again, "The _only_ reason I'm still here is because I told Clint--"

"Clint's gone."

He doesn't mean that. Doesn't mean to _say_ it. Doesn't mean to treat that bit of information like a reality in any shape or form, and _definitely_ doesn't want to use it as something to lash out at Steve with. He feels petty and disgusting as soon as the words fall out of his mouth. Thinks immediately of Clint dumped on cold concrete, and on damp Belgian gravel, in a drawer Natasha won't let him open, and blanches. Feels his mouth and throat go dry. 

"--I'd keep an eye on you," Steve finishes, then doesn't continue. The silence is awkward, maybe still accusing, on Steve's side. Tony's not sure. Doesn't care. 

"Yeah, well. Don't do me any favors."

Steve doesn't answer. Tony gives him a flat smirk and moves to step past him, but as he does, Steve asks, low, and hovering somewhere between hurt and dangerous, "Where did you get them, Tony?"

"Get what?"

For a second he thinks Steve's not going to answer, but then he heaves a sigh, decides to play whatever game it is he thinks Tony's playing, and says, sounding defeated, "The pictures. The file."

The file. 

Fuck. The file.

He probably looks horrified and maybe guilty as hell as he turns back to Steve. "What file?" he tries.

"You know what file. The one I found in your lab."

After he'd left to go play gristly rerun. He'd shoved the sheaf of papers out of sight, but not carefully enough, it turns out. That or Steve's more of a snoop than he'd ever let on. _Or_ Tony was acting more off than he'd realized and set off Steve's inner Captain America alarms. He should really try to solicit some undercover emotional control lessons from Natasha or even SHIELD, if he ever gets the chance.

"Why did you have pictures, Tony? _How_ did you have pictures?" 

Because Clint hadn't been dead yet. Wouldn't die until days later.

However badly he'd screwed things up before, he's topped himself this time. At least it seems like he hasn't caused reality to collapse around his logical fallacy--if he's even created one--and that's something. That's a silver lining to cling to.

On the other hand, unravelling the space-time continuum and thereby imploding the universe would probably get him out from under Steve's hurt-anxious-angry accusing glare.

"Why," Steve asks, sounding like he's asked it hundred times that Tony doesn't remember blowing off, "Why wouldn't you tell us?"

The urge to come clean spills up his throat, but Tony swallows it back and makes himself say, "It doesn't matter anymore."

It does. He just doesn't have the time to explain it to Steve when every minute he's losing here--now--is also a minute that he's losing two week ago. That _Clint_ is losing.

"Tony." Steve's voice is a low growl. Not as pissed as Tony had thought. There's an undertone to it--a waver--that means that whatever thoughts Steve might be entertaining, they're scaring him shitless.

Probably, he's afraid that Tony'd had a hand in doing Clint in. _Probably_ , he's telling himself the thought is crazy and impossible and Tony would never, and he's fucking right, but there aren't a lot of ways to logically explain the evidence that aren't shady as hell.

Tony sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. Maybe he should have made that move earlier, because Steve relaxes a bit at the gesture. Looks at his feet and then away. Comforted but uncomfortable at the sight of Tony's fractures.

"I didn't kill Clint, Steve," Tony whispers. "And I didn't set him up to _be_ killed. Jesus."

Steve twitches guiltily, but says, "I don't think that."

"You don't _want_ to think that."

The conversation sucks. And it sucks to be having it at all, when it's going to be wiped away again. He's wasting his time on redundancies.

"Tony. Where did the file come from?"

"SHIELD," Tony says, truthfully. He's not sure if Natasha had still requested the examination. Probably, or the papers wouldn't be here. But if Steve had filled in the team, then--trying to entertain the logic hurts. Bruce had probably been right about the dangers of unraveling reality, when he'd warned Tony off three versions of it ago.

\-----

Whatever leaving the file behind might have changed, it hasn't happened yet when Tony resets to two weeks ago. He could hide the thing better and at least spare Steve that extra bit of grief, but by the time he climbs into the past, Clint's already in Europe. Has been for at least a couple of hours, and every time before, Tony had played out his rooftop argument with Steve by now and was zipping over the water in pursuit.

He still has over a day until Clint's going to break undercover silence to make his play for Avenger help, and he can be ready at the underpass. See who dumps Clint and get to tracking them. Work backwards, and, next time, get to whoever the bastards are first and then maybe show them, up close and personal, what it looks like to be taken to pieces.

Because Tony has a pretty solid first-hand experience on that, and pretty fucking detailed reference to mine for ideas. 

And a long flight during which he can work out the specifics.

It doesn't go that way though, because this time, Clint is thrown under a Belgian overpass, but not _that_ one, and it takes until almost morning to find him.

\-----

The only possible variable--other than his own postponed trip across the ocean, which had no point of contact with Clint or SHIELD or Clint's abductors and eventual murderers--is Steve, and what he might have said when he'd taken the distress call. 

Tony wants to demand answers out of him the second he appears on site, but why fuck things up more. Instead, he grits his teeth until they get back to New York, then sleeps and drinks away the time between getting back to New York and waking up in future New York and if it's not productive, at least it's also not suspicious and nothing that can contribute to the possible fucked up ideas about him that current Steve might already be developing.

By the time the future--properly the present. That seems important to remember--kicks back in, he's burned down to a grocery list of actions, burnt into his mind by repetition. The muddled time stringing together _go to the roof_ with _argue with Steve_ to _find Clint_ seems indistinct. Just white noise, with those handfuls of events standing out like landmarks or islands. Signposts marking the way his actions are rippling outward through reality. 

And through goddamn Steve, because this has to have been the file thing throwing a wrench into his careful plotting. Again. He'd hidden it, but past him must have set Steve's suspicion o'meter to supersleuth already, in those hours _him_ -him had wasted making nice with future Steve, or he wouldn't have gone looking through Tony's things at all.

Which means _this_ future is probably going to be as big a mess as previous ones, on the Captain America Moods front. The Natasha front is a toss-up Tony doesn't want to engage with, really. It's almost easy and a relief, this time, to head back to the lab and his wormhole, detouring only to eat, shower, and go get Clint's hoodie from where he'd left it forgotten in the drier. 

It's almost a surprise to find that one small thing exactly where he'd put it. Unchanged and unaffected by everything. When he pulls it on, it's fluffy and static charged and if it no longer smells like booze and sweat, it also no longer smells like Clint.


	5. Chapter 5

He hasn't frittered away more than an hour or two in the future, but that's still time he's lost in the two-weeks-ago past. Which means Clint's that much closer to getting in over his head, and Tony's got two hours less to get to him in time. Will be cutting it closer and closer each go-round, even if he sprints back to his lab immediately, and manages to whittle his turn-around time down to minutes.

If he suits up and leaves now-- _right_ now--he can hit Europe by morning, giving him less than a day before Clint calls in his mayday. The window between then and Clint being taken is maybe hours, but if Tony can be in Europe by then, he might have a chance to get to Clint first. 

His keep things steady by following the script option has officially expired, and even if Tony's not a gambling man, he _is_ a don't-overthink-it man, and it's time to make some--hopefully--tactical moves.

And, also hopefully, _this_ Steve--past, unmad Steve, temporarily current Steve--is going to be clear headed enough to be on his game and make solid decisions, because Tony sure as hell isn't. _His_ decisions have been a wreck from the start. From the first moment where he'd let himself get overwhelmed by Clint breathing and talking and being a shit, and _alive_.

Maybe if they hadn't gotten into the very ordinary back and forth about the burn marks on Clint's sweater, and maybe if Clint hadn't been acting so much himself, Tony wouldn't have let himself believe, for those hours that he'd thought were safely his, that things were normal and Clint had never died in what he's now pretty sure had been a shipping container.

\-----

"They probably picked him up in France," Tony says, talking like he won't stop. _Can't_ stop. Steve hasn't said anything, but he also hasn't stopped flipping away from the photos and then back to them, mouth a tight, flat line and brows lowered. It's hard to look at that expression on him and not reflexively see the angry, hurt, confused Steve of the last incarnation of the future, so mostly Tony watches his hands, fingers fussing restlessly at the cuffs of Clint's hoodie, where one of the burnt patches is starting to fray. "His last known location is a SHIELD safehouse there."

Steve looks at him over the top of the folder. He's clearly not following. Tony can see the question starting to form in his face, but before Steve can say anything, clarifies, "Is going to be. He's _going to be_ picked up in France. Probably."

"How do you know this, Tony?"

"Steel flecks. Rust. Wood splinters, probably from a cargo pallet. We're going to find him--well. _I'm_ going to find him--in a Belgian underpass. Whatever's going on, they're getting more pressed for time. The first time, they bothered to dump him in a basement. Now I think they're just throwing him from trains."

It's not quite true. The body had been pushed out of sight. Hurriedly, and kind of half-assedly, but he hadn't just been tossed and left to lay where he fell. 

"Now?" Steve asks.

"I need you to be there," Tony says, ignoring it. "I need you to trust me and I need you to be there, because _I'm_ going to keep winding up _here_ , and in about a day, that won't be enough time."

"You're not making any sense, Tony."

"Not _yet_ ," Tony says, because in two weeks everything will fall into place, and in ways that Steve definitely won't like. "Just take Natasha, and go to France. Stake out the safehouse. And if you see Clint, grab him, get out, and answer questions later."

"Where did you get this?" Steve asks, again. Definitely _not_ on the same page. "This--What the hell is going on, Tony"

Tony tries not his throw his arms up in frustration. He smacks his hands open-palmed onto the table instead. 

"Why do you have--Is Clint--?"

"Are you listening to me? Clint is _fine_. He's _still fine_. Sometime tomorrow, somebody is going to grab him, and then he's going to be _very unfine_ , before he dies _in a shipping container_." It will probably be dark. Tony hadn't thought about that before, but now that he's trying to explain the situation to Steve, get him to see how fucking dire it is, he's coming up with mental images. Not just remembered flashes of what he's seen himself--the cracked lips that meant dehydration, the dark contusions indicating bone fractures--but images he's coming up with all on his own. Picturing _Clint_ panicky and claustrophobic is making _him_ panicky and claustrophobic. 

Steve rubs his eyes. "Okay. Hang on. Slow down." He drops the file onto the table. Taps it, then stills with his fingertips pressing its now rumpled pages flat to the table. 

"If I didn't have evidence, you'd think I was nuts huh?"

Maybe Steve _still_ isn't sure that he's not nuts, but Steve's also a man who's spent seventy years in suspended animation and helped turn back an alien invasion. He's probably juggling the likelihood of this being another one of those incidents--bizarre and likely to go unexplained in very basic ways--against other, more reasonable possibilities, and finding himself stuck.

Tony feels a little sorry for that. "I built a time machine," he says, and Steve starts to smile in expectation of a joke, then freezes with the look half formed on his face when there's no punchline. "I got to him too late, so I--" He'd thought he was getting over the shock of it. That this was all evening out into calm purpose. Maybe into something that's a bit like Clint's mission mode, but he still has to stop to take a couple of breaths before he can push out, "So I came back."

"You what?"

"The tesseract wormhole machine thing. I made a portal. The details aren't important."

Steve looks dubious. Tony says, "They're going to take their time with him, Steve. It's going to take _days_."

"If you're from the future," Steve asks, "Where's _our_ Tony?"

"I'm not really sure. I'm also missing an entire week. But the universe doesn't seem to be ending, so I wouldn't worry about it. And since _I'm_ alive, I assume current me is also fine."

\-----

" _You're looking for a shipping container_ isn't the most specific information I've ever had to go on," Natasha says, sounding dry and only a little sarcastic in his ear. "At least there aren't going to be that many of them in the whole of Europe."

That's more sarcastic. Tony corrects, "In France."

"That narrows it down."

"It's most likely rusted."

"Keep helping."

"It might be blue? But don't focus too much on that and get sloppy about checking things out. I said _might be_."

There's silence from the quinjet while Natasha takes too long to organize a comeback, then sighs instead and says, "I'll do my best," in a vaguely offended tone.

Tony grins. It feels good to have her and Steve and the team in on things, and have their competence on his side. Even if their chances of getting to Clint in time are only marginally better than his, and mostly those odds are only being improved by there being two of them. 

"Find the safehouse," Tony tells them. "He might still be there." Should, hopefully, be there until sometime on Monday, giving Steve and Nat a good day and a half where their SHIELD insider information might be worth something. "And if he is, you get him out and then you sit on him."

"And get reported for unauthorized mission interference?" she says, "Don't worry, I'm on it."

"I'd say you'll get your proof," Tony says, "but I don't think you want that. In fact, I'm kind of hoping to be proven wrong."

\-----

He isn't. But when Clint's mayday comes in, Steve's the one in Europe and he's the one who intercepts the call.

He knows it's Clint, knows it's the call for help, even before the alert and JARVIS's report. He picks up with an urgent, "Where are you?"

"Tony?"

He needs to get through this. He has Nat and Steve nearly in place. He could pull this off, repair the whole mess, if he can get past the punch to the gut that is Clint's voice. "Yeah," he whispers.

Clint, the idiot, takes the time to say, "Hey, Tony." Tony can hear the grin in it. The hint of flirt.

"Where are you? Cap and the Widow are on standby."

That gets him a moment of silence as Clint regroups. If Tony had been thinking clearly--if he hadn't been finding Clint dead repeatedly, for _weeks_ now--it might have occurred to him that his seeming precognition might be kind of unexpected. At least Steve and Natasha had had some evidence to go on, and had been kind of primed for an off the wall explanation.

Clint goes with, "Tony, what did you _do_?"

"I didn't do anything." Yet. Not technically. Other than talk a little and share some reading material that Clint doesn't need to hear about.

"Where are you?" Tony demands. Again. His stomach's going into knots. "Clint, _please_."

"Oh man," Clint says, and Tony remembers the last time they'd seen each other. Remembers Clint fucking over his entire plan either because Tony had freaked him out, or because he wanted to prevent freaking Tony out further when he left. "Look, calm down," Clint goes on, "Okay? I'm--uh. In a _bit_ of trouble."

A _bit_ of trouble. Tony would roll his eyes if his throat wasn't closing. "Okay."

"So my cover got blown. I gotta--"

"Are you in France?" 

"Germany."

Fuck. Tracing his comm relay had thrown up France as Clint's general position, but _of course_ that was being bounced. Not enough to be obvious, but enough to be misleading. It's a fucking amateur mistake. Natasha at least should have caught it. Maybe even new covert Steve.

_Tony_ should definitely have caught it.

"We can _get to_ France," Clint offers.

We. Because of course Clint's working with a team. 

"Coordinates, Barton. I'll relay them to team America. You find them and you keep your stupid head down." He wants to add, _and come back_ and _I've been trying to save you_ and _hold on, hold on, hold on_ , but before he can figure out how to phrase it in a way that won't scare the shit out of Clint _or_ come off too crazy, Clint reports,

"Transferring data," and a second later says, in a rush, "Gotta go, Tony. Try to fly straight, okay?" And then he's gone, leaving nothing on the line but silence.

\-----

This time, Tony joins Steve and Natasha in Belgium instead of the other way around, setting down on the gravel by this time's underpass with the dual thump of armored feet and a clatter of stones, then stands watching Steve and Natasha's backs for what feels like a long time, until Natasha turns and walks to him. She takes his arm to steer him away, like she's trying to protect him from the sight of what's happened to Clint. Like he hasn't seen it before and hadn't brought them the official forensics report, complete with multiple pages of up-close color photography.

"I'm sorry," Tony says, blurting it at the same time that Natasha's mouth opens. Probably, _she_ was about to say the same thing, but it's been his line. It seems right for him to be the one to say it. Seems like a part of the ritual now.

"You did what you could." Her voice is even, and too calm. 

"I just--I talked to him."

"I know." Her smile is brief. Small, and trying for comforting, and then gone again, leaving nothing but cool, unflappable detachment. "We got your message."

He's seen Clint dead before. He's lived this almost-exact moment before. There's no reason it should be punching him in the gut the way that it is. He'd _known_ they wouldn't get there. Hadn't promised Clint they would. He'd been ready, and experience-tested and fucking _prepared_ , but for all his practice it's Steve talking to the agents who've arrived, back military straight and jaw set. Formal, and flawlessly polite. 

Honoring the loss. Respecting Clint, and what he'd sacrificed and Tony feels petty and childish for wanting to strangle him for it. For wanting his phone call do-over so he can properly cuss Clint out for taking off out-of-schedule and getting himself killed again, and for resenting how noble they're both making this seem. Clint, with his brave grating under-statement _bit of a problem_ and Steve with his ma'ams and sirs and perfect solemn dignity.

He doesn't want to see Clint be moved. This time, he doesn't want so much as a glimpse of his torn shirt or bare feet. He feels close to a meltdown or maybe a tantrum, and balls his fists as tight as he can inside his gauntlets before stalking off, footfalls satisfyingly loud on the gravel. Heavy enough to echo against the bottom of the overpass until he steps out from under it, Natasha trailing.

"I'm fine," he growls, "If anyone needs help it's Steve." There's a hum of assent from somewhere behind him, but it's not followed by the sound of departure. 

"Don't use me as your hiding excuse." It's mean. He's tired. He's not even sure he cares if Natasha takes it personally, considering that soon this won't even have happened this way. Next time he'll be nicer and it won't have mattered what he's said here and now and this time around.

Gravel crunches and rolls. He hears Natasha let out a long breath and from closer by. "He saved my life," she says, after what feels like a long time. A long silence, broken only by Steve's voice drifting over from where he's conferring about Clint. Maybe talking to Bruce over the comms. "More than my life."

"Please don't share." He deserves to get belted in the head for that one, but instead Natasha laughs. Low and really more of a sad snort. More gravel rolls as she kicks at it. 

"Fuck you, Stark," she says, but it's friendly. Very Clint like. It's hard to tell, sometimes, which one of them had rubbed off on which.

To Natasha, this must be like losing a limb. 

"I'm sorry," he says, again. For being an asshole. He doesn't say that part, and Natasha doesn't infer it. 

"It was going to be one of us, one day," she says, but she's starting to sound a little watery. A little less sure, now that the adrenaline is going out of her. Tony swallows. Reminds her, 

"I'm fixing this. This is just a _problem_. I can solve it."

Natasha doesn't make a fun remark about time machines, and after a second Tony senses her attention shifting away, and turns to look. "Bruce and Thor are here," she says. 

They are. Thor striding out from a Shield transport with Mjolnir swinging by his side, and Bruce following, smaller and shoulders hunched forward in a way that would be aggressive in anyone else. His coat looks more oversize than usual. In a second, at least one of them will come after him and Nat. The sounds of them talking with Steve carry despite their low volume. Thor's voice reaching them clearer than Bruce, and Natasha smiles--for reasons Tony can't figure--and starts to turn to go join them.

"Tasha,"

"Stark." It's not a rebuff. 

"Make sure you get a full report."

She stops. Looks back at him, face solemn again. Catching on fast. "I got you the file," she says. 

"Yeah." He's not sure it matters. He and what things he's brought through the portal seem to be existing outside proper logic. A walking, talking, paper pushing, coffee drinking contradiction. Still, why risk it. 

"You can't--?"

There has to be a way to concisely explain the specific problems involved in his set-timeframe re-do device, but Natasha glances towards the others, then back to him. He goes with, "There's certain limitations."

Natasha considers that. Says, "Tell me what I need to do."

\-----

The next time Clint dies, Tony doesn't even bother walking over to him. Just makes his calls and stands away, not looking at the small huddle of pale and dark that had been Clint. That he'd talked to--again--just a handful of days ago. 

He's still standing there when Steve and Natasha arrive, and Natasha walks over to pretend to check on him, but mostly to get away from the technicalities of body removal. He goes through the whole rigmarole with her again before they notice Thor patiently but pointedly waiting and head back.

Which is when Tony notices the embankments. Just slopes of eroded earth, creating shelter around where Clint's been dumped. 

He's done it again. Got lost and missed the obvious. 

"Son of a bitch. It reset. It's the same fucking underpass again."

Natasha stops. Thor's close enough to cant a questioning look at him. "The--" Tony waves at the dirt. There's grass growing out of it where it's not too rocky, but the whole effect is of tidy neglect. Euro-spiffy, even though the place reeks of abandonment. 

"Steve didn't find the file," he says. 

"You showed it to us."

Causing Steve to not snoop, and to go to Europe ahead of him. Causing Tony to pick up Clint's call, again, and causing Steve to not warn him, and even if Tony can't find the end of the tangle, that whole temperamental point of contact is making a mess, and there's no point being angry at Steve, much less _this_ Steve, but Tony's suddenly spoiling for a fight. Yells, "What did you tell him? What did you tell Clint?" even though that Steve, that possibility of Steve and Steve-actions, is gone. May as well never have happened, except that he's aware that Clint, one Clint, a some _when_ Clint, had maybe thought he'd been sold out. That _Tony_ had sold him out, and it was bad enough for Steve to have thought it, to have jumped to that conclusion, but--

"You son of a bitch!"

Bruce steps between them. Looking small and so ashen he's almost green. Or maybe so angry at the scene Tony's making that he's almost green. It's hard to read him, sometimes.

"I didn't say anything to him, Tony," Steve says. "I didn't _talk_ to him." He looks confused and hurt, but understanding. Sympathetic. It reminds Tony of drinking with him, a whole bunch of possible outcomes ago, and suddenly he's deflating until the armor--and Bruce, a little bit--is the only thing holding him up.

"He--" he's not explaining, probably. Probably, he makes no sense, even though Steve and Natasha are mostly kind of filled in. "He still took four days to die. Even when he thought--" he snorts and disgusting moisture slides down the back of his throat. "Probably he was hoping to get a chance to punch me in the face, that time."

They don't ask him what he's talking about, and Tony's not sure if that's because they've figured out enough on their own, or because they think he's losing his mind, or because there's SHIELD agents around who don't need any more of an earful about his withholding and unauthorized using of what should have been confiscated tech. 

That last seems the most important, so Tony swallows the rest of the accusations threatening to spill out and thinks _fly straight, Stark. Fly fucking straight_ , until Bruce nudges him into motion. 

"Come on, Tony. Let's take Clint home, okay?"

"I talked to him."

"I know. It's okay."

"It's not okay. He said _we_. _We_ can get to France." A whole rerun ago. This time Tony had already known about Germany, and directed accordingly. "You think _I_ got him killed? Steve?"

"I didn't--"

"Then tell me; where the hell is the rest of his team?"


	6. Chapter 6

Tony doesn't really explain what his outburst had been about, concentrating instead on how he'd _undone_ a change--even if it was only the specifics of Clint's dump site--and how some minor discrepancy had snowballed into causing it in the first place. On Steve finding the file twice, but only changing that outcome once. Some small difference in Tony's choice of comments, maybe, changing the timing of Steve's mission of nosiness or what he might have said to Clint. 

There's no way to make any of that into useful knowledge, and not terrifying randomness made worse by the backstabbing suspicions _he's_ now having. Which is, really, the only part he can do anything about, so the first thing Tony asks when he gets back to his proper place in time is, "Did SHIELD recover any more bodies?" and, "Did SHIELD _look_ for any more bodies?"

Or survivors. He's not in a generous enough mood to want there to be survivors.

"What?"

He's probably been acting strange all missing-week long, judging by the look Natasha's giving him. "Did I ask this before?" he checks, just in case, "Did you already dig something up?"

"No and no. What's going on, Tony?"

"That question is starting to be like some kind of water torture. The psychological one, not the waterboarding one."

If there's one thing they're getting used to, maybe, it's him not making sense. He's been digging that particular hole deeper with every go-round. It's a good thing they know about what he's done with the wormhole maker now, or they'd probably be worrying about him for entirely different reasons.

"Clint was in Germany with a 'we'. So why didn't find a _them_?" Natasha's eyes narrow. Tony adds, "In the underpass," for clarity. "Or anywhere else. You hear anything?"

Her silence is enough. 

"Okay. Great. You run this by Bruce. I have to go."

He's nearly out the door when Natasha calls, "I could come with you."

"Can't. I already sent you to Europe."

\-----

He climbs into his lab of the relatively recent past with a plan. Or at least, a general course of action, and the first step of it is to find Steve and fill him in, starting with re-introducing him to Clint's post-mortem.

Which isn't in its hiding place. 

That's not a problem. He'd spent a few hours trying to run down some hunches and making sure his changes were still coming out as expected. Maybe's he's past that point and the tell-all he's already set down has taken.

"JARVIS. Get me Steve."

"Captain Rogers is not in the building."

_That's_ a bit weird, considering how this day is supposed to go. Tony looks out the window. Frowns at the sight of the still lit sky. It's not late enough for Steve and Nat to have left yet, if they're on schedule. "What time is it?"

"It's five o'clock, sir. PM."

Earlier than he'd left the future, and by hours. Steve should be around. Should have just finished talking with current him. Should be reading Clint's file, which would explain it missing from the lab.

"How about Natasha?"

"Agent Romanov--"

"Is not in the building. Got it," Tony says. His stomach is sinking. "JARVIS, where are Rogers and Romanov?"

"They're still en route, sir. Their estimated time of arrival in Germany is--"

He's lost a day. "I lost a day?"

He's not ready for it. He should have a good week in the future, before he runs out of time, and he'd counted on being able to expand that into months, slipping multiple past weeks into a day.

Without an actual tesseract to power it, his machine is running out of charge. Another easy, logical prediction he hadn't made.

\-----

The first, most obvious solution to that is to get Bruce in on it. On the ground level.

"You what?" is Bruce's response.

"Built a time machine. Ideally, Steve would be telling you this, or at least nodding along, and it would come off a lot more convincing, but--" he shrugs. Bruce gives him a suspicious look, but the circuit he treads around the machine is at a distance. He's been at least partially briefed, and Tony's pretty sure he's seen the file. He can see Bruce having questions he doesn't actually come out and ask.

Eventually he settles on, "This thing works?"

"Yep. I'm in the here and the now, aren't I?"

Bruce considers him. Carefully and from head to toe, then flicks his attention to the portal splashed across the ceiling, and back. "Is that how you trashed that sweater so fast?" he asks, following it a second later with, "So where's _now_ Tony?"

"I'm now Tony. But, for now. It sort of makes sense. I exist in the future, anyway, so I assume I survive this. Also," he says, holding out his hands to show the way the burnt patches in the cuffs of Clint's sweater have mostly frayed into actual holes, and a bleached-out splatter pattern is crawling up the inside of one arm, "it took me _weeks_ to do this."

"He'll be thrilled," Bruce says.

"He'll be dead. Think about time machine problems. In two weeks I'll want your thoughts. Now I'm going to go upstairs. I'm waiting for a call."

\-----

"Hey, Tony." 

Tony exhales. Scrubs at his face with the edge of his wrecked sleeve. "Clint." 

"Listen. I'm in a bit of trouble. I can't talk--"

"You're in Germany."

There's a beat of silence. He can almost see Clint giving his comm a suspicious look. "You're good, Tony Stark."

"Are you alone?"

This time the silence is full of stupid Clint humor. Tony's not sure how he's picking up on that, but it makes him want to laugh and, simultaneously, slide to the floor and maybe throw up a little bit. "I'm serious, Barton."

"Okay. Yeah. Okay. I know. I'm alone. What's up?"

Tony takes a breath. Another. Swallows hard. With his time running out in a more permanent way than had been the case up to this point, this might be the last time he gets to talk to Clint. The only chance to make any change on _Clint's_ side of the equation, and if he fucks up, he very likely won't get a chance to undo it. His jaw hurts. Tony very consciously unclenches it and says, "Clint, this is going to sound crazy, but you need to believe me."

"What else is new?" Clint says, but follows with, "I don't have a lot of time. My cover's--"

"Blown. I know. Steve and Natasha are on their way. You have to get out of there. Just disappear. Lay low and--"

"We're safe. We just--"

"You're _not_. You're--" Tony takes a breath. Holds it. Says, slowly and clearly, "Clint, you're going to die, and I think someone in SHIELD is going to be responsible. You have a leak, or a mole, or someone on your team is out to get you."

Silence. Again. "Barton? Still there?"

"That's stupid. I've worked with--"

"Then don't kill them. Split up. Go stealthily your own ways until whatever mess you're in blows over or we find you."

"What's going on, Tony?"

"I know the future."

" _Tony_."

"It involved a little bit of tesseract. I can tell you about it later." The mention of _tesseract_ is enough to get Clint to simmer down. Tony hopes the lack of protest is a result of Clint listening and not Clint silently freaking out. "It's okay," he says, just in case.

"You saw me die on an alien magic vision quest, and you're telling me it's okay?"

There's sound on the other end. Clint moving. Evading whatever had caused him to sign off in a hurry last time which means he believes Tony enough to risk buying more time on comms.

"It'll involve a train," Tony tells him. "There'll be fibers in your--" he has to stop and make himself not see how Clint will look when they find him, blood smeared and filthy. "In your hair. Blue and yellow, mostly. I think it's from crappy commuter car upholstery."

"This is the most exact fortune telling I've ever seen," Clint remarks. "And trust me. I've seen a bunch." There's a bit of a laugh in it, but not enough to mean Clint's stopped taking him seriously. There's a thump and a clatter across the line, and Clint breathing a little heavily, and then he says, "Someone's not tracing your trace, are they?"

Tony's not running a trace, but starts one to check anyway. "No. You're still showing up in France."

"Okay. So _take cabs_ , is your advice, then?"

"My advice is get out of there, and if you see yellow, blue and gray polyester, get the hell out of dodge. And don't get in any shipping containers."

Clint takes a breath. Huffs it out. "Jesus," he says, "They-- _In a shipping container?_ "

"I'm sorry. I tried to get you. I tried to--"

"Hey. Hey, I'm still okay, right? Don't get all weird on me. Tesseract bad dreams are supposed to be my thing."

Tony _wishes_ it were a dream. Just his mind substituting one dark horrible place for another while it works through his issues and the new issues he has, that involve mostly the same fears but also Clint. "Just get out of there. Clint. _Please_. Don't go to the safehouse. Find Cap."

"I can't, Tony. Stroud's down. I can't leave him."

" _Clint_ \--"

There's scuffling. A bang, sounding more like a door than a gunshot. And then the hurried, "I have to go, Tony," and then silence

\-----

Tony's stomach is in knots all the way to Europe, but at least this time he's flying with Bruce and Thor and an engaged auto-pilot, and that lets him focus most of his attention on all the ways his decision to warn Clint might end up with Clint dumped in a sewer, or someplace else where they might never find the body, much less enough clues to get to him before the clock runs out. Before this, they'd at least narrowed his locations down to Germany, and his movements to the time-feasible radius of him ending up dead on Friday, and dumped in Belgium sometime Saturday morning.

That gives them three days, and by Tony's calculations, if Clint hasn't already rendezvoused with Steve and Nat--and he hasn't--then things have already gone wrong and he isn't going to. And this time, when they shove Clint into the container they're going to torture him to death in, he'll _know_ he won't be walking out. Tony shouldn't have given him the details. Should have explained the time machine in clearer terms, and told him _hang on, hang on as long as you can, even if we don't make it this round, I need the time_.

Should have told him _I'm coming_.

Hopes to fucking death that what he's told Clint doesn't undermine any of the stubbornness that's so far gotten him through to Friday. 

Three, four days to die. They might be torturing him already.

"Tony?" Bruce sounds far away but not so far that Tony can't drag his attention back.

"They're going to kill him. We won't make it in time."

"Then you'll try again. Right?"

"I already I _tried_ again. I don't even know what try we're on, and I don't know how many tries I have left, and--You think SHIELD would give us some tesseract? You think they have just a little left-over corner? That I can have an hour with to power the machine?"

More likely they'd confiscate the thing. SHIELD's attitude to wormholes hasn't really tended to the adventurous. Maybe, after enough research and documented theorizing, they'd let him try, under supervision and after it's much too late. 

He knows he sounds bitter. Angry. He'd been blaming himself for not warning Clint that first time, but Clint is a stubborn, immoveable _asshole_. Warnings don't do any good with him. Tony's not sure why he'd thought they would.

Still, when they find him this time, with old brick at his back and disuse all around, Tony feels panic claw up his throat. This time, it's Steve that follows him away from the body--from _Clint_ \--to stand a distance away while he gets a grip. 

"I'm sorry, Tony," he says, after a while, voice soft.

It's his job to make that apology. Another useless, pointless break in the pattern. "Not your fault."

Steve heaves a breath. Says, "It's not yours either."

"You figure, do you?" he snorts. He's still mad at Clint. It's probably a sign that he's losing his grip, when Clint's more than paid for being an obnoxious fuck-up. 

"Tony." Steve's misreading his anger, if the gentle tone to his voice is anything to go by. Tony doesn't bother straightening him out.

"SHIELD here yet?"

Steve looks away, back to where Natasha and Bruce and Thor are standing. The scene is familiar, but shuffled. Roles shifting, but the script essentially staying the same. It's incomprehensible how some small thing said or not said could change important specifics of Clint's death, but the whole mess Tony had dumped on him had done almost nothing, except maybe terrify Clint with foresights and expectations.

"A few minutes out," Steve says. "You holding up?"

"He knew he wasn't getting out, this time," Tony says, as an answer. Steve can figure out the relevance on his own. "Probably as soon as he saw where they were taking him."

"It's over now."

He wants to torture Steve a little more. Say, _knew he was going to die in the dark_ , just to get it off his chest. Spread the crushing, suffocating weight around a little, but he manages to tamp it down until the swell of emotion is just a dense pain somewhere in his chest, under the arc reactor. Packed hard and tight and small enough to mostly ignore.

"I know," he says, "Come on. Bruce is going to want to take him home, and I want to find out who the fuck Stroud is."

\-----

"Or was," Tony adds, once they're back at Avengers Tower and he has full unmitigated access to JARVIS and the rest of his toys. "Search for everything that has him and Barton and Germany and-or neighboring European countries involved, in any combination."

Natasha looks at him. Her mouth a solemn, flat line. 

"I need a mole," Tony tells her. "If there was anything to find in their hackable systems, I'd have it by now."

"You want me to double time SHIELD for you?"

"Double double time. Turn around's fair play. Everyone knows that."

Natasha sighs. Kicks at his desk to spin her chair a little one way, then hooks her foot around its leg to pull her back around. He's not as sympathetic to her fidgeting as he used to be. 

Or to the babysitting. He's fairly certain that's what she's mostly here for.

"Do you know a Stroud? Worked with one, maybe? Clint said _him_ , so dames--as Steve would say--are right out."

"You know there's an investigation already started, right?" Natasha tells him, kicking at the table again. She looks puffy and like she's trying to hide it. No matter how much the Avengers believe him--and Tony's not really sure they entirely do, or if it's even possible to--they haven't lived through the repeats of Clint's death. The whole _I can undo this_ plan is just theory to them, no matter what evidence he can present them with.

"Sure, and what part of _government agency_ screams 'expedient results' to you?"

"Your battery problem," Natasha recalls. "Right."

"Among other things. Now. Stroud?"

"I don't know him. I don't know everyone in SHIELD, and me and Clint run--ran. Different kinds of ops, a lot of the time."

"So you're friends at camp, but not at school? Gotcha."

That gets a smile out of Nat. Small and almost private, and Tony's pretty sure he's stumbled onto an in-joke. The kind that Clint would smirk at her about over the table or in briefings. 

"Don't cry. This is a no crying lab."

"Steve thinks you should slow down," Natasha says instead, without any change to her demeanor. Nothing to even slightly acknowledge how much of an asshole he's being. It should probably make him feel bad that she's trying so much harder than he is, even though without his time traveler's perspective, losing Clint has to be hitting her harder.

"Tony thinks you and Captain Part-Time Agent should to go to SHIELD and ask some questions," he returns, “Or do some quiet snooping and poking. I think you'll find Steve's surprisingly good at it."

Natasha opens her mouth, but then just says, "Okay," and shuts it again. 

"It was supposed to be an easy mission," Tony says, "And now Clint's dead and we have a whole SHIELD team unaccounted for."

"That could be as small a unit as the two of them," Natasha says. "If this Stroud was already injured, it's possible he's dead, and there's your _whole team_ accounted for."

"Maybe." It's doubtful. He'd have heard something by now, if that was the case. Alive in Europe somewhere is also iffy. That still leaves captured and turncoat, and it might be sick, but Tony's hoping for turncoat, because _captured_ doesn't sound promising for clues. Treachery, though. That would almost definitely leave a trail of some kind. 

"I'll look into it."

"Good," Tony says. "Great. While you're at it, I'm going to go research train lines."

\-----

He doesn't need to research train lines. JARVIS can pull up any information he needs within seconds, and filter it for relevance just as fast. Instead, he sits with his time machine, and considers his portal. Weighs the risk of too much time passing while he waits against wasting charge. It's infuriating for a machine powered by magic to have such a mundane problem. 

It's fucking stupid, and it's going to get Clint killed for good, and the next time he climbs up through his ceiling portal, there's a very good chance that he'll be too late to talk to Clint. That their last conversation will remain stuck at, _you die in a shipping container_.

He should have said something else. He can't get past the thought to get to any more useful mental processes, and finally ends up in the shared kitchen, and then Clint's apartment, where they didn't tend to spend as much time because Tony had kept the penthouse with its stunning views and full-length windows for himself instead of turning it into team space. 

Killing time while being desperate for more time is a strange feeling, but there's not much for him to do other than chew his nails and watch Clint's ceiling and try to calculate how much juice he can likely wring out of a power source that doesn't follow the laws of physics anyway.

\-----

When he gets back to the past, it's a Monday, and not quite two weeks ago. Tomorrow will be technical, real time week since his first arrival in the past. It's been a fucking long week.

"He's with a guy called Stroud," Tony tells Steve over the comm, because as expected, he's lost time again and his advance team's been wheels-down in Europe for at least twenty four hours. "You wouldn't happen to know him? Level five? Tall and slightly graying? Romanov got me a photo." There's noise on the other end of the line. Tony corrects, "Will get me a photo. I'm sending it to you."

"And they're in Germany?" Steve asks, echoing previous information, then something beeps and he answers, "I don't know him, Tony."

"And he's hurt, so if they're moving, they're probably moving slow." Clint had said they could get to France, and if he had any brains at all he was avoiding trains. "Or they have a car. I'll have JARVIS scan for stolen vehicle reports."

"He's not stupid enough to cross a border in a stolen car," Natasha scoffs, "While on the run."

"So my spy game's not up to par. What are you suggesting? They purchased a little Vespa scooter? Those are popular over there, right?"

"I'm thinking SHIELD vehicle," Natasha says. "Or something rented, depending."

On who Clint's trying to evade, and whether he thinks the threat is from an outside source, or believes Tony's from-within-SHIELD theory. Either way, Tony can trace it. "I love you," he tells Natasha, and spins in his desk chair to get to his keyboard. If SHIELD is satellite tracking their _very_ inconspicuous big black vans, there's going be data to infiltrate, and between him and to JARVIS that might as well be a breadcrumb trail.

"But if he's renting on a secret alias, with secret credit cards, it's going to be harder," Tony says, because there could be thousands of tourists renting cars on any given day, and Clint's aliases tended to be carefully opaque.

For once it would help if he was just a little bit worse at his job.

\-----

Tony finds the car, and then Steve and Natasha find it in the real world before Tony even sets down in Europe, playing catch-up not only with them, but with Thor and Bruce.

It's empty, and abandoned off a small road near the border of France and Germany, and Tony tries to think about clues and not _they have Clint right now_. Or, _he could still be close, oh god, oh god_.

"SHIELD car," Natasha says, as soon as he flips his faceplate up, even though they'd known that and had already passed the information on to him. 

Both front doors, and one back one, and the glove compartment are open. The trunk popped. Steve flips it up to look in, then bangs it shut again with a shrug. It's clean. A typical under-covermobile and a very nicely done agent snatching. 

"So, inside job definitely," Tony says, and that means something bigger than Clint or this single, fucked over mission, but he can't widen his perspective enough at the moment to see more than the generality. He nods at the open doors, "And I'm thinking at least three people were in that car. Yes? No? Thoughts?"

"Looks like a controlled stop," Natasha says, hands on her hips, frowning at the scene. "No sign of a shoot out."

And if Clint had been taken by outside forces, there was sure as fuck going to be signs of a shoot out. And a high speed chase. Probably, something would have crashed. This quietly abandoned, empty car is all wrong. 

" _Inside_ inside job, then," Tony corrects, and asks Natasha, "Just what the fuck is going on in your house?"

\-----

This time, they're all together when they find Clint, and Tony hadn't realized how awful a task that part is, until he has company and doesn't have to do it alone.

"Oh my god," Natasha breathes, coming to a full, stuttering halt. It's weird how shocked they still are. Surprising, until he remembers that this is their first try at it. That it's _always_ their first try at it. "Oh god, Clint."

"Listen," Tony says, _really_ inappropriately, "This is what you're going to do--"

"We're going to call SHIELD," Steve says, "and let them know we have him." His smile is twisted. Hanging on to Tony's story, even though it's gone to shit, or fronting like he still believes it. "It can't do any harm now, right?"

"Nothing about the--" Tony dips his head in the general direction of the French-German border, not saying the words, just in case the walls have ears. Or planted bugs. Or who knew. It's unlikely, but his anxiety is on its way to turning into jumping-at-shadows paranoia. "Or I could wake up to a way bigger mess than I want to deal with on top of--" On top of trying to save Clint, he almost says. Almost says _save Clint's stupid ass_ , but he's probably upsetting them enough without insulting Clint, literally over his dead body. "This original mess," he finishes awkwardly.

He feels hyper. Wired with energy and with information he should be putting to a purpose, instead of pacing the gravel, waiting for this whole formula to play out again, and driving Steve and Natasha nuts while he does it. He can tell they really just want to be miserable in peace.

"What you're going to _do_ ," Tony says, stalking back to them, "is figure out who else was on Clint's team. And if anyone knows what happened to this Stroud agent. It won't be so weird if you're asking questions now that Clint's dead."

"Tony," Steve starts, and Tony sees his eyes slide to the side, indicating the body that wasn't _Clint_ , was only right-now, temporary Clint.

"Yeah?"

"It's not the time."

"It _has to be_ the time. I don't know if I'm going to _get_ more time." Tony yells. Shouts. Maybe screams. He's not really sure. He'd felt full of purpose, but maybe what he'd thought was clear-eyed focus was actually the leading edge of hysteria. "What _time_ , Steve, do you want me to _use_?"

"Clint just--"

"He's been dead for a _day_." That's not quite the right math anymore. Knowing where to look, more or less and random factor aside, has hurried the dump site search up a bit. "He didn't _just_ anything."

Steve sets his teeth. Gritting them hard enough that his jaw bulges, but not saying anything. Not giving Tony any opening to scream in his face like he really, really wants to. 

And then he looks away and says, "I'm sorry, Tony," and there's no way to respond to that other than to glare and pace and make himself calm down.

"Yeah, well." He's exhausted, suddenly. All that energy just gone. "We'll get him next time. We just need to--"

"Research the team," Steve cuts in, gentler than Tony's earned, "and his mission. I got it."

"And Nat needs to get the coroner report. I know that's kind of circular, and I don't think it really makes a difference anymore, but just in case."

"Okay."

"I already moved Clint from here--Well. Here-like places--a few times."

"We'll take care of it."

"Okay."

"Okay," Steve echoes, but he doesn't move away from Tony's side until they hear the hum of an approaching transport.


	7. Chapter 7

"Catch me up," Tony says, when he wakes up with his regular week of missing time a big blank in his head. He flops into a chair at their kitchen table, across from Steve, and pours coffee into the biggest mug they have. "What've we got?"

Steve gives him a lopsided, worried look. "What? What's going--"

"I lose a week. Gotta pay the piper, or something. I told you about this." He thinks. Maybe it was a different Steve, or just Steve another time. Or Steve another version of _this_ time. Something like that. "Car in Germany?"

"SHIELD's. Definitely SHIELD's. We have the pick-up point." 

The wash of thrilled victory is followed quickly by disappointment. "I won't make it. He was already gone last time. It's too late to intercept." And he's losing juice. Vague, half-formed ideas of plugging the machine into the building reactor, or trying to squeeze magic out of Thor flit through his head, but they're all too risky. He could blow the machine and lose all chance of catching up to Clint.

"If I could do my do-overs over," Tony huffs, and drops his face into his hands. Briefly. Just for a second. And then he straightens back up and scrubs the fingers of both hands through his hair. "Should have, could have, huh?"

Steve smiles. It's small and kind of uncertain. To Steve, Clint is pretty realistically dead, and this whole exercise is just trust and a gamble, and Tony might be winding himself up over lost time and opportunity, but he keeps forgetting that the rest of them have never lost Clint before. Has to work to dredge up the memory of shock and the hyper-awareness of the empty space where Clint should be. The silences where the team's patterns of conversation still expect his interjections.

"You'll get it this time," Steve encourages anyway. He's managing to sound really sure.

"I've tried a bunch of times," Tony admits.

Steve stops. Looks at him very seriously, then asks, "So is any of this new? Are we making any--" he stops. Tony can see him fumbling for words. He has to admit it's pretty imaginative for Steve to be worrying about possibly being stuck in a loop of futility, even though he has no experience or memories of having done this before. "Headway?" he finishes.

"This car thing's a step forward. I should have squeezed Barton about his mission from the start. Had you squeeze him. I was just--" He flops a hand, in a gesture that's meant to be illustrative, but comes off as helpless and maybe a little confused. 

"The car," Steve repeats firmly, before Tony can go on. Encouraged to hear he's not rerunning things Tony's already heard. "Was their last known location. It was a team of three, like you thought. Clint reported an agent down to mission command less than a day before he called us."

"Okay. Okay, this is new." Names, locations, unlocking information like a series of keys. It's as thrilling as it is frustrating. "He probably thought he still had things under control. Or that SHIELD did. I should have asked him so many things, _fuck_. We could have _had_ this. We could have--"

"Natasha got access to the mission files," Steve goes on, talking over him, interrupting before he can work himself into a good solid guilt-slash-anxiety attack. "Everything looks good. Nothing suspicious."

" _Inside_ inside job," Tony repeats, cutting to the chase. It's a way more recent reference for him than for Steve. Steve's last week looks like it's been pretty full, but he nods like he remembers the original comment. 

"They cleaned up." 

Tony's finger traces the rim of his mug, making restless, absent circles. "You find out what they were after?"

"The mission, officially? Nothing big. Quick in, quick out, like you thought. Security detail, mostly."

"They got _Clint_ for _that_? Unless it's another piece of tesseract, or Loki's staff--" which wasn't in Europe, or anything that SHIELD would put Clint on, given a choice.

"They got Clint for that," Steve says, "because he was their target."

\-----

But Clint can't be the final target, because if that were the case, there'd be no reason to keep him for four days, to wring information out of. Either they're dealing with _terrible_ interrogators, who don't know how to pace things out, or Clint had broken and given them what they'd wanted.

Or they'd run out of time themselves. Gotten desperate and sloppy, or just decided that Clint and whatever they were trying to get out of him wasn't worth the effort of taking along. It's a lot of pieces to sort through, but it's still an improvement on when his plan had been _fly faster_.

"So the question is," Tony asks Natasha and, pointlessly, Bruce and Thor, "who's handling Clint? Someone put his name on this non-Hawkeye-necessary dinky mission list."

"The team requested a sniper," Natasha says, "It's not that unusual, if he's who happened to be available, and no one complains about being put on cushy jobs."

That makes sense. But also not. It's all a little too convenient, and he knows Natasha must have looked into it, because she's had a week to his few hours to formulate and chase down suspicions. 

"So, car," Tony says, and places a lighter on his desk, and then a screwdriver a distance away, shoving paper and junk off the surface and on to the floor to make space as he goes. "Overpass."

"That's all the way in Belgium?" Bruce asks. 

"It's not to scale. Use your imagination." There's not really a need for visual aids. Mostly, Tony needs to move and avoid direct eye contact. They all look wrecked, and a blank week later, Tony's still riding that edge that might be a combination of panic and desperation, and he's pretty sure it's making him seem a little manic. 

"Somehow, they get to what we think is a shipping container. And probably there's a train along the way."

"So a train yard," Bruce offers. "If they're switching between passenger trains to cargo. Or we're looking for a line with both."

Tony scowls at the two items on his desk. Says, "But someone came and got them to take them there, so we're missing a whole other car." Then he looks up at Natasha, "Please tell me one of you investigated their ride and that you have the results."

"Clean," Natasha reports, with a little shrug. "No sign of resistance."

Tony chews a nail. Considers his lighter and the empty space between it and the screwdriver. He can't think of a scenario where Clint wouldn't realize he was in trouble and not put up a fight, even outnumbered. Not after Tony's warnings.

"They had a man down," Natasha says. "So either SHIELD sent _help_ ," she stops to give him a look, in case the sarcasm on that last word isn't obvious, "or whoever was after them caught up and they couldn't risk their injured."

"Stops saying _them_ ," Tony snaps, and uses his chewed nail to point at the screwdriver still indicating an underpass in Belgium, "I didn't see a _them_ , did you?"

"We can probably narrow down possible routes," Bruce says, to Natasha, leaving Tony out of the loop while he gets a grip on what feels like rising temper, "But chasing them down will take footwork."

"I don't have time for footwork," Tony reminds them dully, then snorts. "Times." He corrects, "I don't have _times_." They're giving him concerned looks. 

"I'm running out of them,” Tony explains, annoyed that he has to _keep_ explaining.

\-----

"We're looking for a car," Tony announces, for JARVIS to pass on, pretty much as soon as he climbs into the past, this time with a boost and good wishes from Thor. "Something SHIELD, and medically equipped. I'm thinking van, ambulance or disguised boxcar. What day is it?"

"It's Tuesday, sir," JARVIS intones, at about the same time that Steve responds over the comms with, "Tony?" 

He's kind of curious about whether he'd been with Steve and suddenly disappeared, to emerge in the lab, or if the timeline had adjusted retroactively around his actions as a part of whatever it was that the tesseract was doing to time and space and reality. 

"It's Tuesday?" he echoes at Steve, making it a question for no real reason. It's not like he doubts JARVIS's accuracy.

"Well. Tuesday for you still," Steve says, "I think we might be in Wednesday here."

"You found the car?" Tony tries, because this is the first time that his return to the lab is altering non-solo events.

"We found the car."

"No Clint, I assume?" 

"No."

Tony hears shuffling, but before he can ask, Steve says, "Natasha's trying to get a rush on the forensics."

"Tell her to wait. It's an inside job. Did we already decide that?" The jumble of repetition is starting to be disorienting. He can't really tell what the order of events is supposed to be, or even what events have already happened, versus are going to happen, versus have happened and been undone. "Did you figure out the team of three thing?"

It sounds like a curse. Maybe a riddle. He's exhausted. 

"That it was a three man team? Natasha thought so, too," Steve says. "Tony, they have Clint."

"I know."

"What do you want us to do?"

Tony takes a breath. Swallows and then swallows again. "I want you to forget about him," he says, "For now. We need to figure out what's happening in SHIELD before anyone has a chance to cover their tracks."

There's an argument on the other end of the line. Tony think he hears Bruce's voice, which means the team is all together and he's alone in New York. "Or you can try chasing down every likely car and van between there and whatever Bruce and JARVIS decide are likely train and-or loading yards, but I'd like to point out that those are also just guesses." 

There's silence on the other end. Tony's eyes feel hot. His stomach hurts. "I don't think I'm going to get there this time," he says, then clarifies, "To you guys." Before they find Clint, he means. "I need to look into some things."

"They have _Clint_ ," Natasha yells, suddenly coming on the line, pushing Steve away, because Tony can hear his voice, protesting, then going muffled by distance from the mic.

"I know," Tony says. "We'll get him back." Just maybe not this time. "See who's connected to his mission there. He was supposed to be playing security guard. I'll send you the details."

"You want us to abandon Clint?"

"No. I want us to come at this from the other end."

First they have to _find_ the other end. Tony's not sure they have the time.

\-----

At least he has the head start of future-Natasha's investigations to work backwards from. Or to retread. A tidy internal-workings-of-SHIELD cheat sheet to crib from, and if there's not any more online, available information in this past than there'd been during his other attempts, maybe he can figure out the cover up. Find the shape of the thing by the shape of the empty space it belongs in, like playing a shadow game, or a really fucked up round of charades.

Stroud's still coming up clean. A good agent, with a standard but solid record, and reasonable education. Very average, as far as SHIELD agents go. 

The kind of record Natasha or Clint might build for themselves if they were trying to go unnoticed, and now that Tony's in suspicion mode, he can't stop seeing red flags. Might be imagining red flags, which is a thing he should probably be careful of, but he can't reconcile Clint's worked-with-them-before confidence with anything but a long-game plan to get to him, forging and manipulating trust, and there's reasons that sort of thing sets his head pounding. "Everything looks like lies," he tells Steve, via JARVIS, "I'm looking at their cafeteria lunch menu and I don't trust it. How about you guys?"

"I trust our lunch menu," Steve says. Wry and a little sarcastic. Calm. Steve's continued ability to focus is one thing that's great about having him on board. Even if a part of that is coming from his faith that Tony's got a handle on things and a plan in the wings that will result in Clint's safe return. 

Steve's probably going to have a rude awakening. No matter how much Captain America spunk and optimism he's trying to bring to the situation, nothing's going to change the fact that it's Wednesday and Clint's going to die sometime on Friday. It's two nights away. Tony wonders how aware Steve is of their time frame and how set certain aspects of it are. 

"If we could go to SHIELD with this--" Steve starts, stupidly, musing out loud.

"We can't go to SHIELD with this," Tony says, "SHIELD will have him iced." Or whoever it is operating through SHIELD. There's a lot of things Tony wouldn't put past SHIELD, but executing Clint like this isn't one of them. 

Even if only because SHIELD would do it tidily and in a more secure location than a shipping container in a European train yard.

"Bruce is looking into--"

" _Bruce?_ I know we're low on spies right now--" He's being an asshole. Clint is likely busy dying, and Steve doesn't need to be reminded of that. _Tony_ would like to forget it himself. Get wrapped up in chasing down leads and be distracted from the things he's not doing. Very consciously, intentionally not doing. Again. 

"Sending Natasha would be too suspicious," Steve says, sounding pleased with himself, "And Thor's not as good at computers, or low key enough. Bruce even has reasons to be here, if anyone catches on to him."

"Point and point." Even if Bruce's research interests and academic contacts aren't the most solid cover they've ever come up with, “What’ve you got?"

"Security cameras. A lot of them were wiped, but we have the second car."

Tony takes a breath. Lets it out. "You're still chasing the car."

"It's a SHIELD medical van."

So definitely an inside job. If any of them were still harboring any doubts.

"Okay," Tony says, and even though there's no reason he should be surprised--even though it's just confirmation of his suspicions--it feels like the air's been knocked out of him. He scrubs at his face. His mustache and beard should be getting scruffy, but they're not too bad. One perk of constantly resetting the worst week ever. "Clint thought--thinks. Well. _Thought_ now, I guess, that he could--" He stops to rub at an eye. "He called in for the medical support. _Clint_ gave them their coordinates. He probably thought they were being rescued."

"From? Do we know who that is yet?"

"That's your job. _You're_ supposed to be figuring that out. _I_ was doing the SHIELD thing. How are you a baseball fan when you don't understand _I got it_?"

He hears Steve puff against the mic, but can't tell if it's annoyance or a laugh. "It didn't sound like you had it," he says, then follows with, "Tony," like it's a whole thought of its own.

"Steve."

"We'll get him." 

They won't. Tony's almost sure that they won't. He's made decisions that will pretty much ensure that they won't. "That van photo's really narrowing down the route possibilities some, huh?" he says. His optimistic tone comes out sounding sharp and snide. 

"Some," Steve agrees, not that encouragingly, and signs off.

\-----

The leads Natasha had found--will find--for him leads him to personnel files. Clint's mission is under tidy, over the top, classified mission wraps, but getting into pay histories and medical records isn't that hard now that he's got more names. 

They all come up as long standing, good, solid, SHIELD employees. As nondescript and reliable as Stroud. The exact sort of dullsville types Tony would put on a small time, low stakes, not-deep-cover security detail. There's nothing outstanding. Not even an infraction among them. 

It stinks like clean up and like _don't look too closely, there's nothing here_.

It stinks like way more trouble and planning and organization than Hawkeye, special stand-up guy that he is, could possibly be worth, and if Steve and Natasha and Bruce have narrowed the second car down to a SHIELD medical van, then whatever they're dealing with has tendrils wide enough to be into medical and transport as well as mission handling and personnel.

He'd guess Clint was into something big and ugly and secret, except that Clint seemed as taken by surprise as the rest of them, and had called in help from the Avengers instead of his extraction team.

As well as from his extraction team.

The extraction team that's likely killing by inches at that very moment.

"Fuck. Fuck. Clint knew something and he didn't say it." Tony blurts, standing up with enough force that his chair nearly tips, then rolls across the floor, the uneven wear of its wheels turning its trajectory into a sloppy curve. "Why did he call _us_? I mean, I know why he called us. Of course he called us. But--" 

JARVIS doesn't interrupt his rant, which Tony's half grateful for, and half resentful of. He needs some comment to respond to. Someone to go back and forth with. Someone to hit, maybe. Or someone to hit him. He could use a round or two in the boxing ring.

"Someone was there," he says, "when I talked to Clint. There was a--a door or something."

"Would you like me to play the recording, sir?"

Tony snorts. "No." Whatever alternate conversation he and Clint might have had, he's fairly certain it won't be different enough to add any clues, and the conversations they'd _had_ are still painfully clear in his mind. "No, but check for voices that aren't me or Barton. Clean up the background."

JARVIS plays him seconds of electronic garble, backwards and forwards, as he scans. Tony doesn't wait for it. "I just want confirmation," he says, stalking across the lab and back, "that Clint's not a complete idiot. He called his extraction team, but he didn't wait for them before calling _us_."

The garble stops, clearing up into Clint's voice and then the bang of a door. Followed by Clint saying, "I gotta go, Tony," and the sounds of Clint moving, and fainter, the murmur of a voice. Nothing aggressive or loud. Barely noticeable. Just people. Tony had already known there were people, and that Clint hadn't wanted to talk once they'd gotten closer, but hadn't made a break for it either.

"He knew something was up. Call Steve. Or Natasha. Call Natasha." He's not sure what to tell them. Paces the width of the lab again while JARVIS establishes contact. The awareness of _Clint's_ awareness feels like something expanding in his chest, taking up the space his lungs should occupy and making his breaths shallow and fast. He should probably sit down.

"Clint knew his team was compromised," he blurts, the second he hears Natasha's voice. Not even waiting for her to complete a syllable. "Or at least that their support team was. That's why he called us. That's why he didn't believe me--why he didn't _say_ he believed me--when I told him to watch his back against them. They were there. He couldn't talk. They were in a safehouse that could have been bugged."

"Tony?"

"Fuck. They _knew_ that he knew. The first time, he called us back. I talked to him all the way to Europe."

"Tony, what's--"

"I'm _telling you_ what's going on!"

He has to stop to breathe. Taking short, rapid breaths. 

"Okay," Natasha says, then, "Are you okay?"

"No. Yes. Shut up and listen." 

Natasha shuts up. Tony sits down on the floor and rests his head on his bent knees. Takes a second to not think about Clint dying, and the ways he's likely dying, then takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Get Bruce out of there. If you still have him snooping, get him out."

"Alright."

"Clint changed things. When he left earlier, I mean. Some timing of something. I don't know what, but he caught on to them, and they caught on to him _being_ on to him."

"What the hell are you talking about, Tony?"

"Clint. I'm talking about _Clint_. When I said he was going to die, he thought I knew--that I was talking about--"

" _Tony_."

"Clint was counter spying. He could have cut and run, but he was fucking _counter spying_."

"You're not making any sense," Natasha says, and he wouldn't be, because his story is strewn over multiple optional realities, and half-based on things that may or may not have happened in quite the same way or at all.

"Get Bruce out,“ he repeats, "and _keep_ him out. Clint's not the final target. The Avengers are."

\-----

"How are you getting that, exactly?" Bruce wants to know, when they get back in contact, but it's not like it doesn't make sense. After New York, after any number of things that had come after, they're a clear trump card in Nick Fury's sneaky pocket.

"What else could they want from Clint, that wouldn't be easier to get to through SHIELD, if it's infiltrated anyway? If it wasn't Clint, it would have been Natasha. Maybe Steve."

"What the hell do the Avengers know that--?"

"Nothing. We don't know anything," Steve says, a bit distant, his voice tinny. "We have no idea what this is about, or who these people are. It's not us they really want."

"SHIELD," Natasha says.

"Fury." 

"SHIELD via Fury. Cutting off the head is step one."

"Cutting off the limbs," Tony corrects, "I don't know if this metaphor is still holding, by the way." Outside his window, the light is changing. Clint has just over a day, and with the time machine running down, Tony's not sure how much re-do he's going to get next time, or how much he has left _this_ time. His blank week might be expanding. It's hard to tell when it's just a period of nothing, like he's been in a dreamless sleep.

"Before anything happens," he tells the others, "And even if this all goes to hell, I'm going to need you guys to remember to do some things."

"The post mortem." It's probably a good thing that Natasha's so stuck on that, in case Tony ever slips and forgets to remind her.

"And look into Clint's mission and team mates and objectives." The repetition is grueling, but nerve wracking. Every time, he's afraid he'll leave something important out. "And I need Bruce to think about ways to extend my tesseract battery pack. Just in case." He doesn't need it yet. It's just to plant the seed as far back as possible, in case it takes time to come up with something. "And I'm going to go see Fury and bring him the very surprising news that someone wants him out of the way."

There's a moment of silence on the comms, and then Natasha says, very low, "So nothing on where they've got Clint?"

"No." He has a fair idea of what they're _doing_ to Clint, though. And an idea of what injuries had been caused when, and what this night's probably going to be like for him. He doesn't say any of it to Natasha. She's seen the report for herself, anyway. "We'll keep working on it."


	8. Chapter 8

It takes too long to find and get to Fury, when Tony also doesn't want to state his business to anyone he might not be able to trust, and by the time he's located, caught up to, and ambushed the man, it's been dark for hours, and running on no food and no sleep makes it feel even later. Tony's not sure if he should be thinking about Clint, or trying not to.

"You look like hell," Fury tells him, like he's not surprised to find Tony waiting in his car. 

"Your GPS isn't very secure," Tony counters, and adjusts the rearview mirror to see exactly how fucked up he looks, really. "Car locks, too. You should look into that."

"Really." 

"And I'd get started on it pretty soon if I were you. Also, are you aware that you're missing an agent?"

Fury stops with his key half into the ignition and looks at him. Takes him in head to toe and back, then turns the key, adjusts the rearview back to its previous position, and pulls out. Then, when they're on the road and the seatbelt alert is pinging its soft but insistent warning at them, guesses, "Hawkeye."

Tony tries to smirk, but his lips are chapped and it stings. "Got it in one," he says. "The others went after him, but they're not going to make it in time."

Fury, to his credit, doesn't swerve or hit the brakes, or even turn to look at him. Just waits for the rest of it, which is a pain, because Tony had planned it all out as a series of increasingly grim, possibly non-sequiturial responses. After dealing with the Avengers, he's not prepared for the lack of interjection and demands for explanation.

"We're going to lose Clint," he tells Fury, "in about a day. The estimated time of death is sometime Friday morning. Early."

Fury glances at him, then turns back to the road. Doesn't ask how he knows that, or if they've been threatened, or why he hadn't been informed sooner. Instead, he flips the radio on and jogs the dial around until something soothing and jazz comes on.

"Is that supposed to calm me down?" Tony asks.

"You seem pretty calm already."

"Yeah. Well. I've been here before. Well, not _here_. This part is a first. Nice car, by the way. Very fuel guzzling."

"And where's my team?" Fury asks.

"Europe. Somewhere near or around the French-German border. You didn't hear about Banner visiting his foreign friends in academia?" 

Fury's eyebrow raises. Tony says, "Huh. And here I was under the impression that you kept tabs on Big Green."

"We do."

"But not today? Or not personally? Or are you starting to get a niggling feeling that's uncomfortably like suspicion?"

The car comes to a very law abiding stop, then, when the light changes, hangs a left, and then a right, and then another right. 

"Why are we pulling into a diner?" Tony asks.

"For coffee."

"The car's clean. I checked for bugs."

Fury parks anyway, and gets out and Tony follows, then stops, halfway across the narrow parking lot. "I don't have a baseball cap or my mustache glasses, you realize? If you're trying for incognito."

Fury doesn't stop. "You'll be fine."

\-----

He is fine. It's probably the combination of Clint's ruined sweater and exhaustion, making him look worn and unlike himself. It's a sickening kind of relief to slump into a booth and feel distant from the catch-up game he'd been trying to catch up on.

"Why are we here?" he asks, as soon as Fury's ordered, and they're left to themselves.

"Because you're going to tell me exactly what is going on, and how you know with such specificity when my agent is going to die, and why _I_ don't."

Tony takes a breath. Lets it out. So much for distance. "One promise first--you don't take anything from my lab, or try to bar my access to the lab or try _anything_ that might seem even slightly against the spirit of this deal, regardless of what I may or may not have in there."

"Tony."

" _Promise_ me. And anyway, if you do anything, this all goes to shit, Clint dies permanently, maybe _we_ die, and then probably you. And then we lose SHIELD."

Fury leans back to consider that. Then he says, "Fine. Talk."

It takes even more time to fill Fury in, and, unlike the team, Tony's not sure how much faith and willingness to suspend disbelief he comes pre-wired with. Probably not a ton, but the fact of both Steve and Natasha being onboard with the lunacy coming out of his mouth maybe counts for something, because he listens to the whole thing and takes the folded papers Tony pulls out of his jacket and tosses to the table.

"Might want to finish your burger," he suggests, because it's probably polite to offer some warning before letting someone open forensics photos over their dinner. 

Fury gives him a look, but unfolds the documents anyway. Leafs through the pages, before flipping back to the photos, then glances from them, to Tony and back again. Says, "I thought he wasn't dead yet."

"He's not. You can call your morgue and see if they've conducted this autopsy yet, but I'd rather you didn't. I have a finely tuned--thing--in progress."

"A thing?"

"We'll call it an algorithm. You tinker in the wrong direction, people find out what _we're_ finding out, get the jump on us, and I wake up in a week and missing a team, maybe my tower, and with no time machine to fix it with anymore."

Fury goes through the papers one more time, then, instead of tucking them away like Tony had expected, hands them back. Says, "You want me to pull an inside job."

"We've been trying that already," Tony says, "I just want you in on it."

\-----

It's slow going, Fury style. Tony's not sure what he'd expected, but hanging around what he suspects is a safehouse while the director rifles through lists of names and addresses hadn't been high on the list. It's making him antsy and nervous and even though he has a computer with him, there's not much he can do but watch the second hand tick its way around the clock in Fury's kitchen and--despite himself--compare the time against the report he has rolled in his hands.

The paper's getting grimy and damp from his sweaty hands. He keeps fidgeting with it, almost opening it before catching himself and rolling it into an even tighter tube. Clint's probably thirsty. Tony remembers his lips being cracked from more than impact.

"It's going to take time," Fury says, when Tony's gotten up to pace and sat back down, and demanded to know what the hold-up is, at least three separate time, "If SHIELD is infiltrated, we're going to have to pick our contacts carefully."

Clint has a day left, but Tony has no idea how long before that the effective _too late_ marker might be. At what point Clint will be too far gone to save, even if they manage to get to him.

"As I understand it," Fury tells him, "You have time. _Another_ time."

"That part's getting to be a problem," Tony says.

\-----

He leaves Fury's while he still has cover of darkness, hoofing it back to the tower under the pretext of possibly needing to get into an Iron Man suit--lot of good that will do--but really because he can't stand to watch Fury be meticulous and careful while their time runs down.

"Tell the team I'm on stand-by," he tells JARVIS, as soon as he gets back, "and ready my fastest suit."

JARVIS does both, but instead of ending up at the launch pad, Tony ends up in Clint's apartment, and in Clint's bed. Listening to Avenger radio chatter and watching the daylight crawl across Clint's ceiling. 

"I don't know how to say this," Steve says, once he's on proper comms and they've filled each other in, "But maybe you should stay there. In case Fury needs back-up."

"Or a save," Natasha adds, sounding like she's enjoying the idea. Tony doesn't tell her that they're down to hours, and it feels like he should argue the point, but really, he's grateful for the reprieve. Finding Clint, this time--just this time--might break him. He's rather not have to see the results of what he's more or less intentionally caused by redirecting the team. 

"Roger that, Rogers," he jokes weakly, and leaves the comms open while he waits for more news and for Natasha to tell him _I'm so sorry, Tony_.

\-----

The present kicks back in with a vengeance, and it takes a good few minutes to remember why Fury might be in his kitchen, conferring in low tones with Steve and Maria Hill, while Tony shuffles past them for coffee.

"Don't tell me. You fucked up, lost everything, and now this is SHIELD HQ?"

The conversation pauses while they give him a concerned look he's gotten way too familiar with. At least this time it's on new faces. "So I forget things," Tony says. "So sue me."

"A side effect?" Hill asks, and really. 

"Sharper than Bruce, this one" Tony tells the room in general, then re-explains, "I lose a week somewhere. I have it on Captain authority that that week still exists, but--" he shrugs. "I like to think of it as optional."

"I _wish_ it had been optional.” Hill doesn't sound pleased, and she's giving Fury a look as she says it. It's good to see some blame being passed around that's being passed to someone who isn't him.

"So what do we have? Other than Barton in the morgue. Is that still how this goes?"

Steve gets up and comes back with his hands full. Lays files on the table one at a time. Says, "Post mortem and forensics," and "SHIELD recon," and "Vehicle tracking. And this is a list of names of everyone Clint or his team passed information to who didn't pass it up the chain."

It's a good stack. A lot more there than _I know what I last saw him wearing_ , like he was filing some missing persons report. They're so close Tony can feel it like the nervous jitters of pre-test-flight. Nothing left to do but succeed or fail.

"Okay," he says, to Fury, "Okay. What are we looking at?"

"We're looking at a sizable faction within SHIELD looking to take control of our resources and assets, and gut us from the inside out, to continue operating under the name."

"A mutiny."

"A coup." Fury's lip twitches. Tony can't tell what he finds amusing in the whole mess. It's not even the worn thin, cracked smile Natasha had been wearing the last few versions of the week. "A _covert_ coup."

It's shadows in shadows. The kind of mess Tony hates. The kind Clint and Natasha understand, but he and Steve aren't quite sure how to fight, at least until the targets come into focus and become more distinct.

"Crap," Tony says, "I was hoping we could solve this by just getting someone to shoot someone."

"Don't worry," Hill says, "There'll be a lot of shooting of a lot of someones in the near future," then adds, "Covertly. Probably. _Hopefully_."

If they get there. If _Tony_ gets there. His future's been sort of limited, lately.

"Okay," he says. Again. "Nice catching up with you kids. Now tell me what you've got on Clint, because the battery in my Delorean is running down."

\-----

Tony climbs into what turns out to be mid-day Thursday, his jump cut short by another day. "But with answers, this time," he tells JARVIS, "More or less. How's our intrepid leader?"

"Would you like me to contact Captain Rogers, sir?"

"I meant Fury, actually, but okay." It might not actually be a great idea to fill now-Fury in on what he'd find later. Who knew what kind of snarls he should be avoiding and what messes he could make. Better to keep the damage to a minimum, or at least obfuscate enough that he can smooth over the wrinkles.

"We don't have Clint yet," is the first thing Steve says when the call connects. Anticipating the question. 

"I know."

"Do you--Are you," Steve stops. Ends with, " _Back?_ " in a doubtful tone that would be funny if they weren't hours away from losing Clint. Bright penny Steve's been putting together what's probably looked like erratic behavior on Tony's part and realizing he's been getting a different Tony--or at least a later Tony--every few hours.

"Yeah," Tony says, "Yeah, I'm back. Sorry if things have been weird."

"Things have been weird since Nineteen Forty-Two." Tony can hear the shrug in it. "What've you got?"

"Nick Fury. Also Hill, and I think Natasha's coroner was clean." Out of sheer luck. "So right now, SHIELD is us and the three of them." Tony stops. Asks, "How much of this did I already catch you up on?"

"You were going to see Director Fury."

"Right." Tony remembers the call, now. "Well, it went okay. And our jolly Saint Nick of Christmas Future gifted me with possible locations. Opened up the whole off-line train-related SHIELD properties file for us. We should have time to check them out if we split up. I'll send you the list of coordinates and meet you there. Just give me two minutes to slip into something shiny."

\-----

The weather in Europe is the same it's been every other one of Clint's last days. It's sickeningly familiar. "I had JARVIS drive," he tells Natasha, as he requisitions her whole thermos of strong coffee, "but it's still not exactly easy to sleep in the suit. It kind of locks up. It's a bit freaky, actually."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm great. How many Fury hidey-holes have you scratched off the list? And where's Bruce?"

"Four, and with Thor."

"Huh. You've been busy, busy." Not busy enough, considering the time they have left. Tony bounces his leg. It's hard to cover up the twitching when he's in the armor, but maybe Natasha will put it down to the sudden but intense caffeination.

"I need to remind Bruce to think about energy. I'm down to--I don't know, exactly, but this might be it, so let's move, alright?"

Natasha and Steve have a car. An unlikely little cute thing, in an unlikely cute shade Tony wants to call _persimmon_. It makes Steve look even more like a clueless tourist, behind the wheel with his elbow resting in the window and wearing really stupid shades. It's probably Natasha's doing. _Don't look cool while undercover_ seems like a page from her book of sneaking, and everything about the both of them is coming off lost and ridiculous.

They're parked in an empty lot behind an ugly corrugated iron shed. Train-related SHIELD depot number five, Tony guesses. Empty and fenced-off and last used maybe sometime during the cold war. 

"We'll call him for you," Natasha says, "If you don't want to, but let's get out of here before someone notices and something changes." And makes Tony's from-last-possible-future information obsolete.

"Right," Tony says, "Because that shade of orange is really inconspicuous."

"We're lost," Natasha says, and jerks her head at the car, "Boyfriend wouldn't ask for directions."

\-----

When they meet up again, at site number seven--six having been eliminated by Thor and Bruce--Steve and Natasha are still doing their confused tourist routine, but they've switched out their car for one in lime green and Natasha is driving.

"He's not here," Tony says, as they pull up. "There's not even any power. JARVIS isn't finding a heat signal, or vehicles, or any sign of _anything_." He can tell he's gaining volume. Steve and Natasha have no idea how absolute their deadline is. Tony's not sure if he's even given them that information. Not the specifics. "He's probably in bad shape by now, and we still don't know where--"

"We have to look, Tony," Steve says. His tourist shades aren't doing much to support the reassuring steadiness he's obviously trying for. "All of those things can be hidden. False signals. Insulated basements. What if we miss something?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Let's flush another hour and a half down the can in the name of thoroughness and professionalism."

Steve has the grace to not answer, but just silently gets his shield out of the hatchback of the car and slides his arm through the straps. The way he's absorbed in adjusting it and the way it's making his sleeve bunch means the situation--and maybe Tony and the streak of asshole he can't seem to shut down--is getting to him more than he'd like to let on. There's an ashen look to his face and an unsteadiness to the set of his jaw that's hard to miss now that Tony's looking.

"Sorry," he says, turned away from Steve. "Sorry. I just--It's getting late."

"I want to find him too, Tony."

"I know. I'm sorry. And we should look. Better than having to double back and not know which site to re-search because we half assed all the recon, right?"

Steve flicks his glasses into the car, then closes the door. It's odd to see him with the shield, but out of uniform. 

"Should I have put a _Barcelona_ sticker on my suit?" Tony asks, to make things normal again between them, "So I can fit in with the Euro tour theme you two have going?"

\-----

The place comes up empty. Even though he'd expected that, Tony's still disappointed. There's an actual bitter taste in his mouth as Natasha checks in with Bruce to find they've also come up with nothing. 

"It's always the last place you look," she says, but without much optimism. Their list of locations is getting short.

"It's got to be one of these," Steve says, but really it doesn't. It could be Fury's wrong. That _Tony's_ wrong, and has been the whole time. That he's fit the puzzle pieces together incorrectly, and come up with a distorted image. Maybe Clint's dying someplace entirely different than he'd thought based on assumptions and guesswork, and now there's no more time to work any of it out. 

He's out of do overs, and they still don't have Clint. Still don't know where he is, even despite everything else that's come into unwelcome focus.

"I fucked up," he says when they assemble, meeting Thor and Bruce to compare notes. He's glad of the faceplate, and of the darkness of the parking lot they're in. Half the purpose of the rendezvous, Tony's sure, is to give each other pep talks, but it's nothing he wants to hear. This time, the Avengers being new at losing Clint is making them painful rather than pitiful. They're determined and brave-faced and full of faith in Clint's ability to hang on long enough to be found. Listening to them exchange futile theories feels like being scoured from the inside out, until he's more blank and empty than hurt. "I misread something somewhere," he explains. His voice sounds flat. "Got the answers to the wrong question, or something."

"He's not dead yet," Steve says, at the same time that Thor makes a reassuring _have faith_ statement. It's almost morning and they're out of leads, and it would only be fair to flip his faceplate up and look them in the eye, and tell them that he's blown what might have been his last chance, but he can't. 

"Yes, he is," Tony says, "And in a few hours, we can go get him. I know where to look."

\-----

This time, it's impossible to leave Clint to Steve and Natasha and SHIELD to deal with. As much as Tony would like to be done with the day, to run home and pick up with Steve where he'd left off, at the bar in his penthouse what feels like an eternity ago, and poison himself properly on cocktails this time--if it's the last time, he owes Clint a bit of backbone. 

He's not sure if he's grateful or not that the others give him space while he lets the armor thump in pieces to the ground, letting them depower and fall wherever, then goes to crouch next to Clint, resting a knee on the ground when sitting on his heels gets painful. "I know this means jack shit, Barton," Tony tells him, "but we tried." He's not sure he's seen Clint this close before. At least, not his body. Even despite the horrifically detailed mental pictures his brain's been throwing at him, it feels new and strange and freshly awful. 

Clint's eyes are mostly closed, leaving dull slivers of blue. His lips dry and cracked and parted enough to show the edge of a tooth. If Tony lets his vision blur enough, Clint could almost be sleeping, but when he focuses, the details make the illusion impossible to maintain. He's pale and too still and there's blood in his hair, and something about the set to his mouth is wrong. Relaxed too far into a non-expression. 

Tony tips backwards, collapsing to sit on his butt in the gravel. Touches Clint's hair carefully. Not wanting to disturb any trace, even if it might not matter anymore. The way Clint's hair is smushed to his head is making him look even more lifeless, and if Tony can fix that one thing, then he will.

"If--There were so many times, where if I had done something _different_ ," Tony says, watching his fingers straighten Clint's hair. It's better than focusing on his face. "But it was always too late. By the time I knew what I should do, it was always too late. I was--I had a fucking _time machine_ and everything was still always too fucking late."

Clint's lip is cut. Tony's memorized it by now, and seeing it is sickeningly familiar, but bizarrely steadying. He knows how everything will play out from here. He's played it out. It isn't, really, the punch to the gut that it had been, the first time. Or at least, it shouldn't be. At some point, Tony should have gotten _good_ at this.

"Ready to take him home?"

"Huh?" 

It's Bruce. Standing at a slight distance. Shoulders hunched like he's bracing for impact, or walking through a high wind. "SHIELD's here." 

Tony hadn't noticed. Had somehow tuned out the arrival of a whole transport and the Avengers-Agents discussion that's still going on in the background, distant and low enough that he can only make out parts of words, but close enough that he should have been aware of them.

"I guess," Tony says, turning back to Clint and not getting up, "Nat's going to get that funeral she's been wanting. I can't promise you I'll be sober enough to give a good eulogy. I might let Steve do it, if you don't mind. Or--I don't know if you had a will or arrangements or anything. I didn't really look into it."

"We can sort it out later, Tony," Bruce says, and, when Tony looks up, "I'm sorry."

Tony laughs. It sounds wet. "It's your turn for that, huh?"

"What?"

"Nothing." He starts to unfold. "It's nothing. I had a thing going with Natasha, but you can be in it, if you want."

It's hard to get up. His body feels heavy, but more than that, he doesn't want anyone touching Clint, or wrapping him up in dark plastic. He's going to throw up. Or implode. The pressure he's been carrying in his chest feels more like a black hole, now. A vacuum threatening to collapse him into himself rather than something about to explode outward. 

Bruce doesn't respond. He does catch Tony's arm like he's afraid Tony will fall back onto his ass, and gives it a heave. Hauling him the rest of the way to his feet. Not really giving him a choice about it, unless he's willing to make a scene over Clint's body, and he's probably done that enough times already. 

"Come on, Tony." It's muted and far. He can hear Natasha and Steve talking, sounding just as muffled. Thor. Some distant fucking train.

"Oh hell," he says, and laughs. It hurts.

Bruce gives him a tug, trying to hustle him towards the others. Tony digs his heels in. "I know where Clint is. Was."

Bruce tugs again, then stops. 

"Not specifically, I mean," Tony says, "But I have a really good guess where I fucked up."

"Tony--"

Bruce still has his arm, so Tony steps into him. Using the contact to bounce Bruce back into motion. Reversing their roles, and steering Bruce towards Steve and Natasha and the transport. Using him as a screen while he wipes his face. "Think about energy, Bruce. You have a week to think really hard about energy. Do you remember me saying something about that? And while you get busy, I need to give a certain director a certain headstart."


	9. Chapter 9

"The whole time," Tony opens with, as soon as he comes to in his proper time, even though he's sure he's covered at least some of this before, in the time after losing Clint, "we've been finding Clint under a fucking railway line and like idiots, we followed the evidence they peeled off his hair and assumed that's where we should be looking."

Steve gives him a look, but Tony's too wired to decide if it means _I already know this_ or _are you sure you're okay_.

"What we needed," Tony goes on, ignoring it, "was more reckless leaps of logic. Or reckless leaps of intuition, I guess. I made the horrible mistake of trying to be cautious and responsible."

Steve smiles. This time, they're the ones who are used to the loss, and Tony the raw nerve. They've had more than a week, and he's had desperation and then blankness. 

"The fiber from Clint's hair," Tony explains, "was post mortem. They moved the _body_ in a train."

"You said he died in a shipping container."

"He did," Tony says, and follows it with, "JARVIS, get me the director. Why isn't he already here? He was here last time." There's no way for anyone to have an explanation for the discrepancy, even JARVIS, so Tony doesn't follow up, and paces while the call connects. "Nick."

"This isn't a secure line, Stark."

"It is now. Wanna come over for drinks and gossip? Can you be here in two seconds?"

There's a click. Fury turning on his own security measures, no doubt. "Is this about our agreement?" There's just the barest pause before _agreement_. For code, it's terrible. Vague and obvious at the same time. Fury either has great security, or trusts Tony's.

"I don't know what that is, but I'm going to say 'yes'. Also, did you by any chance leave us your shoebox of secret index cards to rifle through while we wait?"

\-----

The time machine is still spitting its portal onto his lab ceiling, but Tony's pretty sure that climbing through it will deliver him to a time after Clint's death. There's not much he can do with it other than stare up at the pool of light and tinker and pace. Creating an even greater temporal distance between him and a time where Clint's still breathing. 

"Pretty, right?" he asks Natasha, when she comes in after him. The babysitting is familiar now, and almost comfortable. The portal to the past an eerie, troubling thing, now that he's sitting still long enough to really consider it.

"Beats lava lamps," Natasha says, "but a bit big for most apartments. What's going on?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

Natasha gives him a once-over, followed by a fishy look, then turns back to the light pooling on his ceiling. Her hair is a muddy plum in the blue glow, her face washed out to an unpleasant, too-pale color. "What happened to _out of time_?"

"Times," he corrects, "And I'm hoping Bruce and missing-week-me came up with something good. I'm hoping we're as clever as we think we are. And if we are, then I think with our powers combined, us and the tiny parts of SHIELD that don't want to kill us, can figure out where Clint is. So where's Bruce?"

\-----

Bruce, it turns out, is no longer in New York, and that's all anyone knows. For about five seconds, Tony's sure he'd given under the strain of loss and failure and headed out to live alone in the wilderness, but as he's reconsidering the likelihood, Fury arrives and says, "Facility in Maine with Hill."

"You have a facility in Maine? What kind of place is that for a spy homebase?"

"It's R&D," Fury says, bland. Ignoring the raised eyebrow Tony gives him. 

"I didn't think you were seeing other R&D. I thought it was just us. You and me and SHIELD, with some Avengers stuff on the side that we agreed to not let come between us."

"We have," Fury says, "the _rest_ of Eric Selvig's research. What we've dug out of PEGASUS so far."

And had charged with tesseract energy. It's so obvious it's painful. He'd forgotten all about that part of their first group misadventure. Hadn't, maybe, ever been that focused on the parts that predated his own involvement. "I could kiss you, but I think I'll wait for Maria and try her instead. No offense."

"There's not much," Fury warns, "A lot of the research is still underground and there wasn't much power moved around to begin with, but Banner thinks there's enough there to give you a chance."

"It'll work," Tony says, more hopeful than sure. "It's Bruce and me. It'll work." He's already thinking it out. Considering risks and options and trying to calculate how much energy might be left in the machine and how much time that might buy, when he'd been close to losing almost whole days off his jump, at the end. "But before I get to work, I'm going to need you to help me narrow some things down."

"Way ahead of you," Fury says, and that has to be his missing week in play, because as wily as Nick Fury might be, there's no way he's cleared a whole SHIELD facility and resorted their information without Tony's input or Avenger help. Tony must have had a hand in acquiring the files that appear out of Fury's coat, but there's no hint of it on the man's face. "Try to keep up, Stark."

\-----

"Clint," Tony says, climbing into the past on what turns out to be late afternoon on Clint's last Thursday, his time loss reduced to hours, even after what they'd spent calculating and adjusting calculations and not accidentally sending the tower into orbit. "Isn't at a train station, loading yard, whatever train thing we were thinking. They moved his body in a train. Or along the tracks, anyway. Probably rolled it in commuter car carpet or something to move. We need to be looking at boats. Barges. Ones where someone can transfer a dead body from a container to a railcar without anyone around to see. Someplace under SHIELD control, but tiny. Someplace a small team could secure."

There's silence on the comms, for long seconds before Steve says, "Go ahead, Tony."

"They have him at a safehouse. Near water. Near rails, but probably not a stop. Maybe a short drive away. Probably they have a third car we didn't track. Clint's still missing, and _they're_ still missing, so they don't know we're onto them. They're going to be someplace out of the way, but active."

Natasha says something questioning in the background, that Steve stops to listen to, then he asks, "How are we going to find that?"

"Because we know when Clint dies and how long travel takes and Fury knows all the top secret, not-on-digital-file hideaways. And because they think SHIELD's safe. Because they think they're hidden inside the machine."

Steve doesn't answer. In the background, he can hear Natasha calling Bruce and Thor and telling them to stand by.

"They're an active status team and we've had this coming week at least twice now. That's enough time to narrow the possibilities." Steve wouldn't remember, but Fury working on notes from himself means that there's probably bodies already stacking up somewhere, but also cleared agents flushing out the infiltration, uncovering a missing paper-trail, a chain of unmade reports, and dead-ended acquisitions, with no clear end recipient. The shadow shape he'd been looking for, and needed Fury and Hill to fully uncover and interpret.

"In the right radius," Tony says, "and at that level of security, there's three safehouses that fit the parameters." Supported with supplies and energy and updated security measures, but unused. Invisible in all other ways. "Two in Germany, and one in Belgium."

"Belgium?" Steve echoes.

"And call it a hunch, but I bet that's where he is. I'm getting the satellite-eye's view, and if it has a big metal box outside--" He's sure it does. It _feels_ right, and if he leaves now, he can be touching down in time to pull someone limb from limb. Or do something slower, and more meticulous. He's constructed enough violent fantasies that he's going to have to spend his flight picking favorites and eliminating options.

"Tony?" 

It's Natasha. There's an edge of tension in her voice that hadn't been there when they'd been chasing Clint's death all over France with nothing to go on but a list of obsolete depots. He's probably infecting them with his jitters. 

"They're not on satellite." 

"They're hidden," Natasha says, "We're on the right track."

"JARVIS is breaking into SHIELD's mapping to confirm." Tony doesn't need the confirmation. He's sure they're right. They've got it. He's out of leads and possibilities, and everything he's cut off, every guess he's eliminated, leaves this and two back-up maybes in Germany, where Clint's team had been moving away _from_. 

"Contact Bruce and Thor and go," he says, even before JARVIS chirps an alert at him, "I'm sending you the coordinates."

There's no time for any kind of preparation, outside of just _getting there_. JARVIS's report follows him into the elevator and upstairs, speakers activating to keep pace as he heads through the penthouse and out to the roof.

He takes the launch ramp at as close to a run as the dressing arms will allow, leaping off the end and banking hard, hurtling towards open water and Clint in as direct a line as possible, letting JARVIS correct for wind and air traffic, and the curve of the planet.


	10. Chapter 10

The place is small and not awful looking. Even at night, it seems welcoming enough. Just a little, non-descript house set off by itself near a canal, satellite TV receiver on the roof, ordinary car in the drive, with Steve and Natasha's horrible orange number parked to block it and a more understated sedan that was probably Bruce's stopped half on a flower bed. Out front--or out back, it's hard to decide with how the house is situated--is a short wooden dock, and off that, a small barge with a large, rectangular bulk set on top of it.

Or maybe a standard size barge. Tony's not really that up to speed on the comparative scale of canal boats.

He comes in too fast. Lands too heavily. The thump of it is loud, leaves dual indents in the dirt, and jars his teeth and bones. He'd like to speed, repulsor-driven, onto the barge, but doesn't. Instead, he powers down and takes stock, trying to stay alert and focused just in case there's anyone around still trying to get the jump on them. Trying to not fuck everything up, now that they're so close and on--literally--borrowed time. 

The place is quiet enough that Tony can't really hear anything other than the blood rushing in his ears. There's no sign or sound of a fight, and no lights on but one bulb on a post, illuminating the end of the dock. It's spooky, more than anything, and the robotic sounds his armor makes when it moves isn't doing much to help.

"Are you guys here?" he asks the comms, in a whisper. It takes a moment for anyone to answer, and when someone does, it's not in his ear, but in the form of Thor stepping out of the metal box--blue it turns out, that bit of forensics proving uselessly true--and onto the flat deck of the barge, nodding solemnly at him in greeting. Maybe in acknowledgement, or maybe in confirmation of something that Tony's not on the same wavelength about.

"Oh god," Tony says, mostly in reaction to Thor's silence and set expression, "He's not supposed to be--We were supposed to be in time."

"You missed the fight," Thor tells him, then adds, "It was disappointing," in a mollifying tone. Probably, that's meant to make him feel better, but it's not really the fight Tony had wanted. Just vindictive, ugly payback. A chance to put to use every gristly trick he's learned, starting in Afghanistan, and finally make his mental recordings work _for_ him.

That's not likely to happen now, with Steve and Bruce on scene. Natasha, he thinks, would have let him have at it.

"And Clint?" 

Thor looks solemn. Shifts his weight. Tony's really too keyed up to have any patience for it. "Tell me. Just tell me."

"It's--" Thor stops, picking his words carefully. It's an unbearably long time before he finishes with, "bad."

"But alive? He's _alive_?" Everything is a backwards mess. Now he's dealing with Avengers who've been _spared_ losing Clint. Who think _injury_ is a bad outcome. Who think _injury_ is anything less than a miracle. Who probably won't understand Tony's sudden attack of shakes. Not really. "Thor?"

"Yes. He's alive, but--"

"Oh god. Oh my god. I-- _We_. We did it. I'm going to come over there and kiss your face, stupid beard and all, and I don't want you to read too much into it, okay?"

Thor smiles, bemused, but steers him away by his shoulders when Tony flips his faceplate up and tries to make good on the promise, warning him, "Aid is coming, but Bruce says he shouldn't be moved until then."

"Okay. I know. He's hours away from--I know. I can do that." He's babbling. Letting Thor hand him over to Bruce, who holds on to his arm as he steps from dock to barge to container, then keeps on holding. Guiding him because even though he can't see in the sudden transition to even further darkness, he also can't seem to stop walking. His feet are loud on the metal floor, muffled only by the remains of rotted wooden pallets. The weight of the armor is enough to make the barge bob a little in the water.

"Steve?"

"Here." His voice is low. Steve's bedside manner voice. Going for calm and friendly and coming off kind of freaky, because it always makes Steve sound uncertain and a little scared, which isn't really the most comforting version of Steve. 

"Thor said he's okay?"

"'Okay' might be a bit strong."

When Tony's eyes adjust, he can see what Steve means. Clint doesn't look much better than he had--would. Would _have_ \-- under the overpass, other than that he's alive. In the cool light of Tony's arc reactor, and the emergency light Bruce has hung, he looks grayed out. Pale in way that's too reminiscent of death, and still. Slumped bonelessly against Steve. His legs are still fastened to the chair he's in, but his arms have been freed and his hands moved to rest more comfortably in his lap, zip ties, and not rope, in pieces on the floor. Even in the bad lighting and through shifting shadows--moving with his own movements and those of the boat--Tony can see that Clint's hands are a mess. Swollen and misshapen. Broken fingers that Tony hadn't been able to focus on all the times before. Now, they're distracting him enough that his brain is fuzzing out the rest of it, blurring the details of burns and contusions and the fact that Clint is--like all the times they'd found him dead--stripped down to t-shirt and the briefs he'd packed from Tony's dresser.

His head is resting against Steve's hip, and even though it's bowed, Tony can see there’s a trickle of red welling at the corner of his mouth and on his lip, then getting blown away on the exhale. His breathing sounds wet, and Tony's not a good enough medic to know that that means, but he's sure it's not good. 

"Steve?" he asks, again. They're supposed to lose Clint in the morning, and it's late. Tony's sure Clint's already started dying.

"I don't want to move him," Steve says, face calm and bland, but still in that low, shaken tone. "I think he has broken ribs. It's not going to help anything if we puncture a lung." If that hasn't already happened. Tony could have JARVIS call up symptoms, but he's afraid to. It's not like there's anything they could do about it anyway. Not with nothing but the field kit Natasha probably has in the car, and Bruce's malaria-curing expertise.

"It was an accident." He doesn't mean to say it out loud. He's just sort of used to narrating his thought processes for JARVIS and the robots. Steve gives him a puzzled look. 

"They _were_ incompetent," Tony explains, "They weren't ready to kill Clint. He didn't give them what they wanted yet. They were trying to move him _to_ a train." He lets the armor go, making sure to keep it quiet this time, and pads up. Hesitant. He's not sure if he should try to touch Clint, or where. The way the light's shifting is making everything feel surreal. The room--container--smells. Like all kinds of things, most of which Tony doesn't want to think about too much, but it's adding to his lightheaded, dizzy feeling. "Oh my god, Clint"

"I'd give him to you," Steve says, "but--"

"Don't want to move him. I know." Steve's hand is on Clint's back. Fingers splayed like he's trying to hold him together, or like pieces might fall off if he doesn't get as wide a grip as possible. The other is on Clint's shoulder, to keep him from slumping out of the chair, and contact with him has left dark streaks of grime on Steve's belly, ruining his tourist-trap t-shirt. 

"Are we sure we can we trust whoever's coming?" Tony asks, going to a crouch to free Clint's legs. Gently easing the sharp plastic of the zip ties from where they'd cut into Clint's skin, then stays there gently holding Clint's foot, just to have contact. His bare feet are cold.

"Called it in via Fury, so I hope so," Steve says. His hand moves a little. Clint still hasn't made a sound other than to rasp for air. 

"Okay." It's a good thing Steve's the one holding him, because Tony would grab on, and probably kill him without meaning to. "You hear that? Help's on the way, Clint."

"It won't be long," Steve says, "Don't worry." It's easy for him to say, when Tony's overcome by how miserable Clint's last night had been, multiple times. Every time Tony had failed to keep him from dying in a dark, stinking, metal box. It had probably baked him by day, but now he's clammy and too cold, and his eyes are flickering under his closed lids. Tony's not sure what that means, or if it even means anything other than that Clint's dreaming.

He hopes it's just dreams. That it's _been_ dreams, and Clint hadn't been aware of anything, all those time that wouldn't happen now.

That he'd unhappened.

Then he hears engines overhead, and Bruce saying, "Let's get him home," and then it's Monday.

\-----

It happens suddenly. There's a sense of distance, and he's in his lab, a little disoriented and recent time a blank. For a minute or so, he's overwhelmed with the feeling that he'd come in for something and forgot, then can't remember where he'd come in _from_ , or what he'd been doing before, or before that, and then the alarm fades and he starts pulling himself together. Gets his bearings as he rubs at his face with both sleeves. 

He's not wearing Clint's sweater anymore, but a soft, gray shirt with buttons at the collar. He doesn't recognize it, but that could mean anything or nothing. He might have picked it up during whatever came after finding Clint, if they'd stayed in Europe long enough for him to need a change of clothes, or just reached the bottom of a drawer here in New York.

The lab is dim--lit by heads-up displays and not much else. His ceiling is dark. No shining hole to the past being beamed from the floor and splashed across it. That might explain how little time he'd had in the past, this time. His sudden return. "JARVIS, what happened to my portal?"

"There was a malfunction, sir. With the power addition. Dr. Banner can explain it again, if you'd like me to call him?"

"A power--" Tony's heart thuds. He can remember finding Clint, and Steve talking in low tones. Thor, solemn. He can't remember anything after, or if medical had come in time, or what diagnoses they'd made. "Why am I in New York? Is everyone here? What happened to Clint? Is that thing fixable?"

JARVIS starts to answer, taking the questions in order, but Tony's not listening. Already on his feet and heading for the elevators. Bangs the door until it opens, then mashes buttons until he can slow down enough to ask, "Take me where there's someone useful, J."

"Captain Rogers is--"

"Okay. Yes. Good enough. Elevator, to Steve."

The elevator takes him downwards, which isn't the direction Tony had been expecting. He'd expected Steve to be in a communal area, or the gym, or his apartment, but JARVIS is taking him away from those places, stopping halfway to the semi-public, security-clearanced only SI floors. Then the doors slide open and ping meaningfully at him.

"Thanks, JARVIS." Tony knows this floor better than he'd like and he's sure he'll find Avengers somewhere close by, hanging around like they don't live right upstairs and fifteen seconds away.

"Steve?" He tries, calling from right in front of the elevator, even though he's sure JARVIS could give him a more accurate location. "Steve!"

"Tony." At the end of the hall, Steve pokes his head out of a door and makes a weird waving gesture at him, somehow managing to convey _keep it down_ and _over here_ at the same time. Steve might have a talent for something. Interpretive dance, maybe, or mime. Tony would suggest it if his mouth wasn't so dry.

"Hey. Hi. Do I need to tell you about how I forget things or are you filled in? I know we got Clint, or _found_ Clint, anyway, but--"

Steve's face goes serious. It could mean anything. Tony keeps going.

"And JARVIS says Bruce broke my machine." He can hear his voice going tight and stops. Tries to sound more flippant as he goes on with, "Well, not _broke_. Let's go with 'caused a setback'."

Steve's serious look softens a little, which means that he's mostly concerned about Tony's frantic behavior. Maybe he'd been stable all week up to this point, and this is looking like a relapse to Steve. A slide back to when Tony was reinserting himself into Steve's linear timeline every few hours, and babbling what probably had sounded like panicked nonsense.

"I didn't do anything. Go any... _when_ , I guess. I just. There's a big mystery spot blank space in my head. I have theories about it, but they're a bit complicated."

"Well," Steve says, "if they're _complicated_."

That he has it in him to be a joker means Clint's still alive. Tony had figured out that much already just based on finding Steve on the medical floor, but relief washes through him at the confirmation, leaving him feeling warm and drained. It's both a surprise and not that they aren't at SHIELD, considering. Tony might not be awash in medical tech and personnel, but at least his building isn't full of turncoat spies and kidnappers.

"How is he?"

Steve's little smile goes lopsided. He looks over his shoulder into the room, then back at Tony and asks, "You want to come in?"

"Yeah. Yeah, okay." 

It makes no sense to be dragging his feet, but he's hesitant to enter the room. Has to push down the image of brick and gravel that his mind throws up at him when he steps carefully past Steve and sees Clint's lying on his side in a familiar way. Body curled loosely, with one arm thrown out. Eyes closed.

But his face has color. A bit of fever flush instead of waxy paleness. Muddy green and yellow at the borders of bruises that hadn't had a chance to start healing, every time that Tony had seen him before. "Oh my god."

"I know he looks bad," Steve starts. Tony laughs. 

Repeats, "Oh my god." It feels like he should be crumbling, or giddy, or having a reaction beyond standing there like an idiot and watching Clint breathe. He can hear Steve still talking at him, giving a more detailed damage report, but it's just a background buzz. New details are embedding themselves in his brain, replacing the images he's been carrying. The dark clothes they'd been finding Clint in are gone, switched out for pale hospital blue--visible where the blanket's shifted off his shoulder--and Clint's hair is soft and fluffy looking. Clean instead of gummed with sweat and blood. His visible hand wrapped in bulky, crisp bandages. Clear plastic tubing snakes over Clint's cheek and threads under his nose. It feels like a monitor should be beeping somewhere, but the room is quiet.

“We got him. Oh god, we got him."

He can almost _feel_ Steve being pleased about it. Steve has no idea what they've dodged. Not really. Steve--this Steve, the Steve that gets to be permanent--hasn't drank to Clint's memory, or gone to stand vigil by a drawer at SHIELD. To this Steve, this was a close call, well, if narrowly, averted.

Clint sighs, and his face scrunches in discomfort, then relaxes again. His bandaged fingers jump a little, and then it's over and he's still again. Tony starts to let his breath out, but it comes out as a helpless, uneven laugh. Clint's drugged and exhausted and unlikely to wake up, but Tony kind of wants to shake him until he shows another sign of life. Wants to see his eyes open, or hear him say something snippy and over confident.

And then Steve's telling him, "Sit down, Tony. You don't look that great. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Tony tells him, "I'm just gonna stay here for a bit. Tell me if SHIELD self-destructs, but otherwise I might spend the rest of the day just--I'm not sure yet. Crying into my hands or breathing into a paper bag. Probably one of those."

Steve chuckles. Steve has no idea how serious he is. 

"But I wouldn't turn down some coffee," Tony adds, not really kidding about that either.

\-----

It's weird to wake up and have it be Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday--an _all new_ Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday. Somewhere along the way, Tony had gotten used to the idea of living in a rerun that evolved, but essentially hit the same marks. Not having any idea what's coming feels strange, and uncertain, and there's not much to do in the brand new, non-second-hand, non-retrying-Wednesday-one-more-time world, other than keep an ear open for calls from Fury or Hill and occasionally provide low-key backup. It leaves Tony free to watch Clint wake up for increasingly longer stretches of time and with increasing levels of awareness, moved, at least, from the medical floor back to the comforts of his own bedroom.

The first time, he wakes up long enough to complain about being tired, in a raspy, un-Clint-like whine, before going under again, leaving Tony on the edge of his chair, waiting for him to properly come to and talk again. 

Except that when he does, and manages to properly focus, the first thing he says is, "We've got a problem. With SHIELD." He has to stop in the middle to swallow and take a breath, which makes Tony think of the blood that had been at Clint's mouth, where the once-familiar split is gone and never happened, and of the wet sound of his breathing, when they'd finally found him. Clint makes a gross throat-noise and swallows again. "Fury's gotta--"

"Fury knows," Tony says, not quite believing how exasperated he feels, all of a sudden. He'd made a lot of promises when Clint was first dead, a lot of if-only deals about being nicer and more patient and a better man, but Tony sort of suspects they're going to prove hard to keep. "He's already got New York and the Helicarrier in the clear." And probably Maine too, considering, but that's not going to mean anything to Clint just yet. Tony doubts he knows what's there and what it houses, and if SHIELD hadn't been on the verge of hostile internal takeover, Tony bets none of the rest of them would ever know either. 

"I told you not to go." It's not fair. Clint dying had been the loose string they had tugged to unravel everything else. "I told you to run."

Clint heaves a breath. Arguing with him is a lot easier when he's still mostly stoned. He doesn't look like he's really following Tony's logic. Not putting two and two together fast enough to ask questions. Not putting two and two together at all, probably, because his only response is to say, "I'm okay, Tony," in an obnoxiously reassuring tone, because he has no goddamn clue. 

"Yeah," Tony says, and adds, "It was close." 

Clint smirks and shifts, getting more comfortable, then flops an arm out. His hand is still wrapped and splinted, waiting on SHIELD to make sure medical is really secure before they get their fancy toys out and fix him up properly. Tony frowns, not sure if he's supposed to take it, because it's palm-down on the blankets. "Not _that_ close," Clint says, "We've done closer." 

"Sure. Like how Steve was frozen for a hundred years, you mean?" It's not the same. Not the same kind of return from the dead. Or maybe it's close. He might ask Steve, while Steve's still in the habit of being patient with strange behavior, except that this Steve won't have the memories Tony does, and this Clint's never died. "He could have used those mittens."

Clint snorts and pulls his bandaged hand back. Scrubs at his chin with the back of it. He looks hazy and mussed, and Tony tries not to focus too much on the parts about him dying tied to a chair or Tony letting it happen, at least twice. "Fine," he says, slouching in his chair, "Natasha would want me to be nice to you anyway."

"I think I saw Natasha. She didn't say nice things _at all_." She's not the Natasha Tony means, not the one who had sniffled in his lab or wanted proper goodbyes, but Clint's looking really entertained with himself, and even if that's probably mostly the drugs, Tony can't help but grin at it. "And I'm fine. You got me."

"Well," Tony goes on, "I wasn't about to let you die in a box."

"I know." That's more solemn. Determined in the stubborn Clint way Tony had missed. That he's sure had kept Clint alive long enough to be found, and that he'd regretted, that first time, trying to drink all sense away under Steve's supervision. 

"Not in the long run, I mean," he says. "There might have been a couple short term issues."

Clint blinks at him. Not following, or still thinking Tony's on some kind of bizarre spiral, the way he had that first, last night. Or second last night, maybe. Unlike the others, Clint's missed the entire future information updates segment of the whole thing. Probably, Tony should go and destroy any traces he'd brought with him, before Clint stumbles across his own post mortem, unless they, like the destruction of SHIELD and Clint's death, are now just an averted possibility. Gone from everywhere but Tony's awareness.

\-----

In the end, it's Steve who tells Clint the story, and considering some of Steve's ideas about what exactly had been going on, and what pieces he was missing, it might have been an interesting conversation to listen in on and not help out with. Especially since Clint still looks like a half-out-of-it train wreck and isn't processing anything at a rate even approaching normal. He still picks up enough of it that when Tony comes to check on him, he pretends to be busy scratching ineffectually at an arm with his bandaged fingers

"Natasha could have filled you in," Tony tells him, "But I'm not entirely sure how it would have gone. She was pretty upset when you were--you know. Iced."

"Geez," Clint says, and glances up and then back down again. "Tony."

"Yep. You're lucky to have me."

Clint's face works, but Tony can't see what expressions he's making. Finally, he says, "Your fortune telling was bizarrely accurate," in a too tight voice. This time, when he looks up, he's frowning. "I wondered about the--how you knew."

About the container. Tony should never have told him about it and how he'd die inside it.

"But then," Clint goes on, gaze very intent on his fingers, "I figured you _knew_ about it." He looks up. Grins, a little. "And you'd get there."

"I'm sorry," Tony says. Because he hadn't. At least, he'd failed enough times. Hadn't undone the thing at an early enough point to spare Clint the torture and the dark and the telling himself they were coming. Clint shrugs.

"When you came up here," he says, even though they're in his room and not Tony's, "before I left. I'd already--?"

"Bitten the dust? Yeah. Once. And the next time around you'd already fucked off under cover of pre-morning."

Clint stops rubbing at his arm and looks at Tony instead. His frown gets a little more serious, but he doesn't say anything for so long that Tony thinks he's maybe just having a drugs induced space-cadet moment. Then he says, "Sorry. Tony." 

They're separate sentences. Tony's not sure how to parse it.

"On the bright side," Tony tells him, "You helped uncover a conspiracy."

"I'm sorry," Clint says again, even though, really, the whole thing has to be unreal to him. A weird, unlikely, story, and without the portal spilling across his ceiling, the time machine is just a chunk of unimpressive metal, sitting in the middle of his lab floor. Not the convincing center piece it had been. 

"I promised I'd come back." Clint's frown turns into a wry, apologetic smile. "I guess I didn't. It's always the cushy jobs, huh?"

It feels like he's supposed to laugh. Instead, Tony gestures for Clint to shift over and settles down next to him to listen to him breathe. His heartbeat is a steady thump, his body warm against Tony's. He'd tell Clint to run next time, like he's told, and save his skin instead of nosing around, but it's not advice Clint is likely to take. "It's okay," he says, "I said I'd get you."

"I don't remember."

Tony doesn't entirely, either. The few weeks ago, proper time, seems impossibly distant to him. A lot of things are fading, now that the machine is off. Or maybe it's just that he's done recycling the same couple of weeks, now that he has Clint back, safe and alive and more or less himself.

Or maybe it's just too many potentialities to keep straight and make sense of. Even his missing week is starting to fill with ghosts of memories. Vague ideas Tony's sure he's making up, or building from the others' stories. Maybe he'll eventually forget the whole thing. Be reabsorbed into the new timeline as they move further away from whatever reality tangle he's created, all the pieces fitting themselves back together behind him, like the lab robots cleaning up in his wake. All the ripples smoothing out.

Next to him, Clint's quiet. Just a slight rasp or hitch in his breath, now and then. Tony feels him shift, hears the soft noise he makes when he stretches injured muscle. There's light spilling through the window, warm and late afternoon, and tomorrow Clint will still be there, and in the same bed, and in New York, and alive.

"It got erased," Tony says, "It doesn't matter anymore."


End file.
